Exiled

The Premature End...

This one is going to be difficult to write.

It’s really tough seeing your parents grow old. My grandmother in many ways raised me like a mom. Nanna may have been the best parent I’ve ever seen. Time makes us all different.

At first, Nanna started to complain abouto things. She would complain about little things. I remember turning the shower off, but maybe not quite enough. She blew a gasket over a few drips coming down the pipe. She’d hold things in, and then let them out at odd times. She came down stairs in a giant huff one time and demanded that Dad and I get rid of all the stuff we have out of there. Okay. I started looking for places to sell my comics from that point on.

After, she blamed bad news from a friend to being so emotional, but to say this was like her. I’ve never seen her like this. Now, if you know my grandmother she complains about everything. But this was another level. I knew things were different this time. Maybe it was because Dad had been there a few months, I don’t know, but she seemed even more OCD than she was ever in life.

She would occasionally just snap at things in ways I never saw. She yelled at me for eating snacks after about a couple of weeks and saying they were for Uncle Andrew’s kids. Sometimes she’d yell for no real reason. She was upset I was using Honey in tea, even though she never bought it.

All in all, bit by bit, the signs that she really didn’t want me there were manifest. The brief times I went to Windsor to see Oma only made her ask why I couldn’t stay. (I really couldn’t.) A couple of times I asked her if she wanted me to leave, and she said no.

Things came to a head when Nanna confronted dad about his stuff downstairs and he lost it. There was literally no room to put anything anywhere, and after all the needling, he had it. He told her he was leaving December 4th. At the time I didn’t know I was.

I found out about a week before he left. I heard her talking in Maltese about taking me with him. Dad and I were going to go our separate ways after we parted. I confronted her about it.

“Do you want me to go?” I’ve asked it a couple of times before.

“Do you really need to ask?”

“Yes I do,” I needed to hear her say it.

She did.

I have to say I was shocked. Not to say that things were working out for me in Detroit. I found out by the time I would get my state identification that the holidays would be over, so looking for a job that way was out. I started doing a freelance contract that was on and off again, but beyond that, things were at a crawl.

Until that decision.

I had to scramble. Comics can be extremely lucrative, but they take time. I had a week to scramble for a place, and to get rid of the comics. Fortunately, both worked out. My comics are in a storage locker, and I got a place to stay for the holidays. So it worked out, for the most part.

Still couldn’t believe it happened the way it did. Writing this down, I’m still shocked it worked out the way it did.

Maybe it was she was tired. I watched her struggle with Uncle Andrew’s kids when they were over. When I tried to help her by taking them outside, she snapped. Maybe all the people in the house, with a woman far used to living alone and not doing much at this point was overwhelmed.

Maybe she just wanted to be alone. Maybe I hurt her in some way. Or maybe she just didn’t want people to see her like this. I don’t know. I wish I did.

But what I did know that on that day, I headed to Windsor after Dad went to the airport. Nanna drove me to the tunnel and dropped me there.

It wasn’t all bad. I ate good, and she let me work while I was there. It wasn’t all bad. But I do wish I had been able to stay there longer. I’m not sure if I’m going in that direction again, and as such, I wanted to make the most of that time. I knew how precious it was. And I’m grateful for what I got.

I just wish it was more.