Life is Brief, But When It's Gone, Hate Lives On and On

Just yesterday I had made some offhand remark about my grandmother, Nanny, to my nephew (she would have been his great-grandmother), and he asked me, “Did you really hate Nanny so much?” I was immediately reminded of this quote from King of the Hill: “Hate is a strong word, Mr. President. That’s why I used it.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9B7egX52K2Q Hate

“Sylvia Doiron was born on December 31, 1920 and passed away on Wednesday, November 12, 1997. Sylvia was a resident of San Marcos, Texas.” - The only obituary I could find.

"Dr. Pym has only treated one side of the psychology of murder. If it is true that there is a kind of man who has a natural tendency to murder, is it not equally true”—here he lowered his voice and spoke with a crushing quietude and earnestness— “is it not equally true that there is a kind of man who has a natural tendency to get murdered? Is it not at least a hypothesis holding the field that Dr. Warner is such a man? … “So we see,” resumed Moon, in the same melancholy voice, “that a man like Dr. Warner is, in the mysterious workings of evolution, doomed to such attacks. My client’s onslaught, even if it occurred, was not unique. I have in my hand letters from more than one acquaintance of Dr. Warner whom that remarkable man has affected in the same way. We are in the presence, as Dr. Pym so truly says, of a natural force. As soon stay the cataract of the London water-works as stay the great tendency of Dr. Warner to be assassinated by somebody. Place that man in a Quakers’ meeting, among the most peaceful of Christians, and he will immediately be beaten to death with sticks of chocolate. Place him among the angels of the New Jerusalem, and he will be stoned to death with precious stones. Circumstances may be beautiful and wonderful, the average may be heart-upholding, the harvester may be golden-bearded, the doctor may be secret-guessing, the cataract may be iris-leapt, the Anglo-Saxon infant may be brave-browed, but against and above all these prodigies the grand simple tendency of Dr. Warner to get murdered will still pursue its way until it happily and triumphantly succeeds at last.” -Manalive, G. K. Chesterton.

So it was with Nanny. Was it a simple coincidence that her first husband chased her around the house with a knife? Or that her last husband (and her last ‘boyfriend’) both threatened to kill her? Or that her own oldest son said that they had to part, before he killed her or killed himself? When she finally passed away (from natural causes, to all appearances) there was still some speculation among us about whether she had been done in. When the man who was going to preach her eulogy asked my mother and her other brother if they remembered any particularly happy or tender moments they wanted mentioned, they were both stumped for an answer. And they were the people who most defended her while she was alive.

Though God knows why Mom did. I suspect it was a form of Stockholm Syndrome. After Nanny and Poppa Harold separated, Nanny made sure that Mom never contacted her biological father again, more as a test of loyalty than anything else. I think Nanny withheld her from Harold out of spite to him rather than any other reason. My uncles did contact him in later years, but Mom never dared to. When Nanny passed away, and we learned that Harold himself was on the downward spiral, Mom finally was able to talk to him. I was surprised; I had never been told my biological grampa was even alive.* Nanny kind of robbed us of that, as well. Her several ‘replacements’ (she could never hold onto anyone for long) were never grandfatherly people.

Nor was Nanny a grandmotherly figure. She was neither sentimental nor nurturing, and she saw us grandkids as a resource to be used or exploited for cheap labor. Even when we lived with her during college, we paid her rent with the added drawback of no privacy and always to be on hand to mow the lawn or move furniture between her several beauty shops. The upshot was we overheard her calling us “stupid Germans” to her last boyfriend, who she didn’t mind lavishing funds and support on to keep him tied to her crumbling charms.

And Mom was treated no less as a resource. When it became obvious that she wasn’t going to become a second Shirley Temple she was trained as a beautician, to help Nanny, and when Mom ran off to marry Pop (partly to escape Nanny, she later admitted to us kids) Nanny sold everything she left behind. Still Mom stayed devoted to her (she was her mother after all, and you only get one mother) and would pick herself up (even when she could barely drag herself along with arthritis) and travel 30 miles, often with us kids as additional labor, at Nanny’s whim. Mom took classes with H&R Bloch just so she could do her taxes at her insistence. Nanny still favored her brothers (who were smart enough to live out of easy visiting distance) and held the thought of ‘inheritance’ over all their heads to compel … well, their love would be too warm a word. Perhaps attention. And that in the end proved an empty lure, as her businesses were closed and she was almost broke.

Well, it’s been nearly thirty years since she was found alone and collapsed on her way out to the garbage bins. In the aftermath we found out a lot of things about her: her birthname Arzenath, how she had supported a foreign college student (Arabic?) but never her own grandkids, and her metal box of ‘dirty tricks’ (including saltpeter to cut her last husband’s sex drive). Do I hate her? Perhaps not as much as I did, but I can’t bring myself to feel any affection for her, mainly because of how she treated Mom. I remember how I was moving beds around for her once, and she held a shotgun from under one of them. Wherever I moved, she kept the barrel pointing at me, even when I asked her not too. She seemed amused at my nervousness; I think if she ‘accidentally’ shot me (“I didn’t know it was loaded!”) it would have mattered not one whit to her except as a momentary annoyance.

Still, she was my grandmother (“The same blood flows in my veins. The same weakness.” https://www.youtube.com/shorts/7fB2MiFiXp )

And the past cannot be changed; all that is part of my story. “That’s why I hate it.”

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/PCKkVkXyi6s )

My only comfort is that I’m still here to set the record straight. As I know it. Take that, you old ... witch. I forgive you on my own part, but I cannot forgive you for Mom.

*My brother John explains: "Even worse - the Uncles had awesome relations with Harold the whole time, hunting, fishing, hanging out at his ranch, as did our cousins. We did not even have the knowledge that he was alive. They were also able to inherit from his not insignificant estate."