It was in the spring of 2006 that my Grandfather, her husband, died. They were married for about 64 years. About 60 days after his death she informed my father she intended to marry a man who lived at the same assisted living facility and he was going to take over her finances.
My family knew Murry and Grandma were spending time together. They had taken a walk to the corner and gotten lost, and the assisted living facility had to send out a search party.
Murry had been friends with both my Grandparents for at least two years prior to my Grandfather's death, and apparently was a source of comfort to my Grandmother after her husband's death.
Murry wasn't sure how many children he had, and not in that merchant marine kind of way, he literally could not remember. In any event, my dad told her that she wasn't going to marry Murry, and that they were free to spend as much time together as they wanted, and for whatever reason she then dropped the idea.
The most interesting thing about my Grandmother and Murry's relationship was she called him "Morrie"- she wanted to marry him and have him take over her finances and she didn't really know the guys name.
"Don't you think it bothers him that she doesn't say his name right, I mean Murry and Morrie, those are two different names," I said to my dad.
"Maybe he doesn't know his name either," he replied.
In July of 2007 Murry and my Grandma had lunch together. He said he wasn't feeling well and went to his room to take a nap, and never woke up. It was at this point she began her decline.
My Grandmother was a difficult person, difficult in the personality disorder way.
My mom, dad and sister and I all have vivid memory of cruel (sometimes "anonymous"- primarily about wardrobe choices or weight) letters and biting comments (maybe if you took ballet you wouldn't be so clumsy) , of her constant attempts to fracture our extended family, of the outright lies she told others about us, yet now she is utterly and completely a shell of the person she used to be.
Clearly, in some ways this is not necessarily negative, yet it is still inexplicably sad.
About ten years ago my Grandparents moved from their spacious home on a bluff in La Jolla to a quaint much smaller home on a golf course in Placentia. My family helped with the move. After a weekend of helping I got a call from my Grandmother early the next morning.
" I don't know why you have set the coffee maker to play happy birthday, but we don't think it is funny and you need to tell me how to turn it off," she said.
Really? Is there even a coffee maker that plays happy birthday- and if there actually was one in the world- why would my Grandparents have it- how would I know they had it and then know how to program it?
What happened was there was a music playing birthday card in one of the boxes that must have opened and played happy birthday- unable to derive a source for the music, my Grandmother in all her logic, assumed it was the coffee maker- and somehow I was behind the plot. You can obviously see how one would come to this conclusion....
And this was when she was "thinking" clearly...
Years ago I gave up trying to decode her behavior- but amazingly my mother is still- after 46 years -trying to understand my Grandmother's motives-
"Why would she think that..?" I can't tell you how many times I heard those words coming from my mother's mouth.
At the age of around 35 my answer became the same-
" Why don't you ask the cat, because he will be able to give you as good of an explanation as I can."
She was outright mean to all of us, my mom and dad getting the worse of it. Still my dad visits her every single day- and when he told me about moving her it was as if he had somehow lost something he didn't know he had....he is still, as he has always been a good and loyal son.
Today I will go shopping for her- I think she could use a new coffee maker...
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