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About Me
Recent Entries
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Credits
My Grandma, on my father’s side, lived with us and had done since my grandfather, died. Every day my sister and I would have to go into her room and kiss her good morning before we went to school, and we didn’t like it one bit.
The room always had the sickly sweet smell of boiled senna pods and old lady. But it was her shoes that really made us feel squeamish – they were black lace ups with broad inch and a half heels and they were completely misshapen where her bunions had pushed the leather out. But worse, was the way she treated my mother.
According to my grandma nothing my mother did was ever good enough and, though my mother used to laugh it off and say it wasn’t important, I knew it upset her. Even if it didn’t upset her, it upset me. No one was going to have a go at my mum and get away with it, so I asked God if he could take care of it for me.
Then one night I thought God had taken care of it for me.
It was 3 o’clock in the morning and I was fast asleep when my mum and my big sister came into my room and told me that daddy was dead. After that I don’t remember much except at some point sitting in my bedroom and looking at a spot in the rug for ages and feeling numb.
After our family doctor had declared my father dead he stayed long enough to give my grandma some tranquillisers because she had become extremely upset. At about 5a.m she went to her room to have a rest and when my mother went to wake her a few hours later she couldn’t. My grandmother had taken all the tranquillisers and a few sleeping tablets for good measure. So for the second time, and just a few hours later, the undertakers were back and taking another body out of house.
The only possible explanation to my 11year-old self for this nightmare was that God was answering my prayers. He was getting rid of my grandma for me, but the price I had to pay was that my dad had to die first so that she would take an overdose.
It worried me for ages then I started to forget and years later when I thought about it I, of course, realised that it wasn’t my fault and that his high cholesterol and the 60 cigarettes he smoked a day were the real villains of the piece.
