#and i've got two music boxes from gammy

[arathejedi394]

when i was little i loved playing with my grandmother's jewelry. my mom's mom. she wore clip-on earrings her whole life so I would take her hoops and fake pearls and play princess. i can remember her smiling at me while I wore her pearls. just barely. i don't remember hardly anything from my childhood. that's what dissociative amnesia will do to you.

i don't remember a lot of nice things about my gammy. i could tell I was her least favorite grandchild from an early age. it wasn't just bc I was a girl, either, I have another girl cousin on her side that she doted on. when I lived with her at 18 i was practically her maid and she used to berate me for not being on-call 24/7 or not doing things before she asked me to, for not reading her mind and anticipating her needs before she even thought of them. but I still remember playing dress-up with her and being excited to wear her clip-on earrings. she had clip-on hoop earrings of all sizes. i remember doing a solo ballet performance (barely) and how she applauded. when I wrote my first book she sent it to all her friends. and she kept a photo of me framed in her living room next to all the other kids she was proud of. she was so proud of my writing. she didn't read much of it bc she was old and a lot of my original content was too graphic for her but she was proud of me for it. but i still wasn't her favorite. bottom of the barrel. everytime.

i miss her. i miss both of my grandmothers. mimi wasn't all there at the end and she kept forgetting I came out as trans or gay, gammy... she was mean long before she died. she was mean long before I was born. and before that she was transphobic, she hated my facial hair, I overheard as she consoled her friend about how her lesbian granddaughter was going to hell bc being gay was such a slippery slope, she used the N-word as a verb to mean "interfered with" or something. she wasn't a nice woman. she was sweet as hell on the surface but the second she clocked a person as not pure 100% grade-A WASP she was making judgements and snide comments. when my uncle (family friend tbh like a brother to my mom) said "hey all gays go to hell so at least that's good" she laughed. but she would pet my hair and tell me about how my grandpa will call her kitty bc she'd purr when he petted her hair. and I would purr, bc I loved her, and I loved having her stroke her fragile hand down my hair. and when I hugged her she'd hug me back with her frail arms. i loved how she smelled. her perfume was called amazing grace, which I hate bc that means I'm gonna hafta buy Christian perfume to remember her. her and my mom always smell like safety to me. her smile could light up the marianas trench. i shaved right before she died bc I was seeing my fiance's parents and she thought it was for her and she was so happy. i wish I had been there, clean-shaven, for her to just,,, see her little least favorite granddaughter again.

when she was dying my mother broke down sobbing one night, wailing

"SHE'S NEVER GOING TO DIE I'LL HAVE TO DO THIS FOREVER"

bc she was so worn out from gammy's vitriol. i watched her burst into tears and I mean she wailed. her voice was like a banshee's and her emotions were incredibly potent. she made me cry. she was exhausted and was terrified it would never end. gammy was fucking mean. to everyone. I've seen my mom cry like maybe twice in my life, once bc of a panic attack and once bc I was crying, confessing she'd fucked me up with her parenting skills. I've seen my dad cry more than my mom. and I've only seen him cry a few times either. she went from laughing to weeping in about five seconds. both I and my aunt had bought her wine and we encouraged her to drink it bc she won't let out her emotions, we kept her drinking until she was able to release them. bc she fucking can't any other way. if we hadn't given her the wine she would have never said anything about how she felt. she loved her mom, gammy, and gammy was breaking her heart being mad we took her to the hospital in the first place. and honestly? gammy was a piece of shit bc she let my mom get abused as a child. that's ON TOP of my uncle, gammy's other child, saying nothing.

if my mom was so destraught, how did he feel?

but I miss her. i want her back. gammy was my first hero. i didn't know my other grandmother all that well bc we lived on opposite sides of the country but I saw gammy all the time. for years I tried to earn her praise and it was never enough.

but i don't think i learned my lesson. i think I'm always going to be striving for her acceptance. i don't think I'll ever feel like she loved me the same as my brother or my cousins. I've done seances to talk to mimi and my dead aunt before but gammy's been... dead... for about a month. it's not like I was a practicing witch when my other grandma and aunt died, but I still haven't talked to gammy's spirit.

i have a set of fake pearls from her now. and a pretty pair of clip-on earrings. the pearls are plastic and the earrings are glass but they're worth so much.

my grandma's dead. she's like the first person I remember other than my parents. she's just... gone. she wasn't supposed to die? she was supposed to angrily live to 103 being mad she wasn't dead yet. she's not supposed to be dead now. i was supposed to get another decade with her. it's not fair. she shouldn't have gone. i want her back. i don't care if I was her least favorite she was my grandma. she died a few years ago and they brought her back bc they didn't see her DNR but they didn't bring her back this time and idk how I'm going to deal with it. she's just gone. i can't call her and lie about how I'm living bc she's not there. i can't call her anymore. at all. she's gone. i want so much to tell her I love her again. and I can't. i can't tell her that I love her ever again. i can call up her spirit all I like but that's not the same.. she's gone. i miss her. i miss her. she was my grandma and I miss her so much. i want her back. she can't come back. it's not fair. mimi died suddenly, my aunt died suddenly. like with gammy we knew it was coming but that didn't help. i miss her.