(Trigger warning—sexual abuse)
My grandmother is slight, white-haired, slow to speak, and nearly lost to dementia. For a year or so now, she has been in a nursing home, unwillingly.
Years ago when I would visit, she would serve me breakfast: a bowl of fresh home-grown raspberries in a white bowl, or toast with homemade freezer jam that tasted like the purest essence of strawberry.
She wasn’t cuddly, my grandmother. Not effusive. But when I visited, I felt love in that simple bowl of raspberries. In the mornings, rising late, she’d pad through the kitchen in her Isotoners and get me what I needed for breakfast, even when it was past eleven and I should have been up for hours.
She may not even know what she has done to need my forgiveness. I am not sure what she did either. Even so, I do not know how to forgive her.
Anchor, Eagle, Arrow, Snake
If you’d have visited my grandparents, you’d have met my grandfather first. He was loud, charming, funny. He couldn’t ever remember how to pronounce my husband’s name, Dyami, so he cheerfully called him Dynamite. Once he told the both of us, with relish, how he got crabs in a whorehouse in Brazil while he served in the merchant marine.
“Them things was as big as my fingernail,” he said.
I didn’t know whether to laugh out loud or cringe. When I listened to him, I felt like I was getting away with something.
My grandfather could be mean. He used ethnic slurs with a kind of delighted glint in his eyes; he flirted, awkwardly, with waitresses a third his age as my mother squirmed; he liked a kind of mean teasing.
On visits when I was little, the first thing he would say to me was, “Well what have we here? A little Dutch girl?”
I knew he knew I didn’t like this nickname. So I would cross my arms and turn away, all five-year-old indignation, and he would laugh and start talking to my older brother.
“Good to see you Steve,” he would say.
My quiet brother would duck his head without answering.
“Remember that summer you came and visited us? Didn’t we have a good time then?”
Steve would keep his chin down, not answering, and I would sense that he was somehow being teased too.
But a child wants to like her family, so after a while, I would climb into a chair next to Grandpa Bill on the screened-in porch, and he would explain his tattoo, also from his sea-faring years.
It was blued and blurred from age, on his liver-spotted bicep. I had never known anyone else with a tattoo.
He would explain each symbol, the meaning of which I have forgotten.
But I remember the figures: anchor, eagle, arrow, snake.
Horror and Tomato Sauce
I was in the Trader Joe’s parking lot four years ago when I found out what my grandfather did to my brother.
I still remember which parking spot our car was pulling into when my sister called.
My brother had told her, and she was telling me, and now I had this word rolling around my head with my children watching me: molested molested molested.
I am sure my husband saw my face go white. I imagine I waved Dyami and the girls into the grocery store without me. Perhaps I said, Oh my God, over and over.
Because that violation had born poison fruit that was still killing all of us.
My parents were struggling to parent my brother and sister well before our grandfather decided to use Steve like a thing. I am certain that some of the upheaval that pushed my parents towards sending first Steve, then my sister away was a direct descendant of my grandfather’s sin.
I remember hanging up the phone and wondering what in the world to do. It is an odd thing to find out something so horrifying, then get a grocery cart and fill it with bananas and tomato sauce. It is an odd thing to have your whole world tilt and only feel a kind of numb helplessness.
Making Not-Knowing Possible
My grandfather died three years ago. I still feel numb about him. All I can muster is grimness. What should I feel about him, about what he deserves, or whether he’s in heaven or in hell?
Part of me doesn’t care, because let’s be frank: the problem of him is over and done with. He’s dead.
Also, I don’t want to feel much of anything about him because untrue as it is, not feeling feels like the only kind of revenge I’m going to get.
My grandmother, on the other hand—
What do I feel about her?
I imagine my grandmother sitting quietly on the couch while my grandfather silently hurt my brother upstairs. She probably didn’t know. Perhaps she did not even suspect.
But if so, why wasn’t she paying attention?
Why did she marry him? Just as he used to tease me, he called her “Lorraine” even though her given name was Theta, knowing she didn’t like it. The man specialized in pushing past personal boundaries. Why did she decide to get used to it?
I feel like I should tell you that he cared for her as her mind went, that the only reason my grandmother stayed independent for as long as she did is my Grandpa Bill. They were married for forty-odd years. They were, as much as anybody after decades of marriage, one.
How could she have not known?
And if she didn’t, I hate that she numbed herself to make not-knowing possible.
You would think that I would reserve anger for my grandfather, the one responsible. But against my will, the white bowl of my heart is also full of bitterness towards the ones who didn’t see or hear or do something back when doing something was possible.
Holding On to Numbness
My brother isn’t angry with our grandmother. He visited not long ago. When he walked into her room, she started to cry, even though, I’m guessing, she no longer knew his name.
After he told me of their visit over the phone, I sat still, alone in my bedroom on the other side of the country, uncomfortably numb. I thought of him holding her hands. I admire my brother, flying across the country to say goodbye.
And it occurs to me that perhaps my grandmother and I are not so different, really. Both of us have sometimes held onto numbness even when we know it’s poison fruit.
Update: Would you pray for my grandma? She’s taken a turn for the worse, and she may be close to dying. I wrote this essay a while ago, and scheduled it a while ago, and at this moment, grieving as I know I might lose her completely, I find that writing about her has helped me move closer to forgiveness.
Update 2: My grandma passed away yesterday. Please do keep our family in your prayers.
Update 3: I’m grateful to my extended family, who responded so compassionately to this post and our conversations around it. I’ve learned that in the period my brother was hurt, my grandmother was working full time, gone all day. My grandfather, on the other hand, was retired and home. It’s likely she truly did not know what happened. It is a weight off my shoulders to understand more clearly how the abuse could happen.
Image credit: Elizabeth Weller
Tearing apart my Bible for SheLoves Magazine
It is possible to not know, even if you are vigilant. I didn’t know what my former husband was capable of until a little more than a year after our divorce.
I pray that your grandmother didn’t know, because to know and do nothing is unthinkable. I shall pray for peace for all of you.
Thank you for sharing this, Kim, and I am so, so sorry for the awful thing you found out. I really appreciate your bravery sharing here.
Yes, my rational brain agrees and understands–people who hurt kids like this are manipulative and good at covering their tracks. And kids are so horrifyingly prone to believe that what happens is “normal” and to not know how to process or ask for help. And yet–and yet–part of it is just irrational. Though I am finding it easier to let go of the anger and bitterness now that I have been honest with myself that it’s there. She was an imperfect, frail human being that loved me, and like most of us, she was simply doing her best.
God help us; we are all so flawed, and so complicated. Who can understand? I think forgiveness is the only way to get through the terrible times in our hearts.
Amen to that, Bev. I think that’s why it’s helpful to write, because when my anger was buried in my chest, it’s easy to pretend I not only am not feeling it, but that I don’t have to do the work of identifying with either my grandmother or grandfather, or anyone else who has hurt me. Honestly, even my grandfather–who knows what kind of pain his behavior came out of? We all have to be in God’s hands, because we are all broken creatures.
Thanks for sharing so courageously Heather. “And it occurs to me that perhaps my grandmother and I are not so
different, really. Both of us have sometimes held onto numbness even
when we know it’s poison fruit.” It’s always sobering (and empowering) to come to the always-there realization that we are never that different than the “other” person we struggle to forgive/love/understand. This is a good reminder that the seed of “poison fruit” of emotional numbness can potentially lead to devastating implications. It’s tempting to believe the lie that something that starts as self-protection can end up harming others.
Thank you, Justine. Yes, I agree that numbness has devastating implications–it’s a completely natural reaction when life is simply too much to bear, but you can’t stay in it. You have to keep opening up your heart, even if it hurts. And thanks for your kind words 🙂
It takes a VERY high level of awareness to know some things. One of our children was sexually mistreated when we were standing 10 feet away behind double glass doors preoccupied with another guest and the molester was a Christian friend we trusted. It took 3 years and endless amounts of prayer to get to the bottom of the changes in personality and family interactions that finally led to disclosure. And that was only the beginning. I would also like to say that when I discovered that I had unintentionally maimed our middle son by exposing him in utero to the intense sound of a power saw I had a terrible struggle with myself. I had been given hints by God — through my mother and my husband both of whom I ignored — and it was only 16 years later when Dan’s dyslexia and burgeoning substance abuse had sown some of the seeds of “family dysfunction” that I realized my failure to discern was when I was still carrying him inside me. On the plus side, taking responsibility for my part in Dan’s illness and eventual healing led to spectacularly important learning. There is no Redemption without Sin. The truth is, all of us are doing terrible things in sheer ignorance, inattentiveness to the promptings of the Holy Spirit, through greed and every other selfish impulse in the book — and in the Book. A wise priest once said to me, “Never be surprised at the possibility for sin in yourself or in another person. That is what Jesus came to deal with.” And part of my learning has been that “sin” is very often the result of a type of disability like needing glasses. It is a type of ignorance that comes from distortions of sound (not gross deafness) that other people fail to discern and fail to heal. If ears don’t work properly, brains don’t learn self-control properly. If ears are healed, people begin to be able to learn self-control. But it can be a terribly painful learning process, and the older the person the more difficult the unlearning and new learning. If addictions have set in, the new learning is even more painful. I have walked that way of lowliness and seeking for all of Dan’s life — 34 years — and am still seeking and learning about our other ear-damaged children who were inadequately understood and horribly harmed by doctors, teachers, psychiatrists and other ignorant and broken people. Jesus really does make all the difference, for me, for them, and I am sure for you, Heather.
This is so wise, Laurna. You’ve walked this hard road in humility and repented of your part in harm. And I am daily reminded of the need to do so with my own kids. I still sometimes bristle at the need for confession, wondering, sometimes, if I really have to rub my face in what I’ve done wrong, but the truth is that confession is a relief, and is a chance to walk a different path. That is always a blessing, and it is just being HUMAN and growing and beginning and starting somewhere to do something better. Thank you for your testimony from further down the line of parenting and reconciliation.
Thank you for sharing this, Heather. There’s sexual abuse in my family also – back a couple of generations – but I continue to sot out its affect in subtle and not subtle ways. I too have been thinking of my Great-Grandmother must have been a witness to the abuse – I don’t think about being angry at my Great-Grandfather. I wonder if, in part, it’s because I can’t relate to him, but my Great-Grandmother is closer – I can imagine being her and so I am afraid (and thus angry) about the choices she made. Two lines stuck out to me “the man specialized in pushing past personal boundaries” – this is so clear to me, such a good description of an abuser. Also “perhaps my Grandmother and I are not so different, really” – to me, this is the key to compassion and forgiveness – it’s the movement from “against” to “with.” Praying for healing.
This is really helpful to me, Kelly. It grieves me to know that the abuse of long ago continues to affect everyone, though it doesn’t surprise me–the ‘sins of the fathers will be visited on their children’s children’ is a very practical, honest idea from the Bible, if you ask me. And it helps me to know that you too find it easier to feel something–even anger–towards your great-grandmother. Feeling is a kind of engagement, which is, like you said, a movement towards love. Thank you for your prayers.
I’m so sorry for your loss my friend. I hope that you have come to a place where you feel able to forgive your grandmother (and grandfather) and that healing will come in your family. This is beautifully written by the way – as always. xo
Good writing is the best revenge–er, medicine.
🙂
Thanks. It feels good to make something ugly into something beautiful. I really appreciate your prayers.