A memory to forget

Few memories of my Grandma stand out the way one evening does. A girl friend, Lindsey Lovette; the neighborhood wild child at age seven, was staying the night with me at my Grandma Marie's apartment. It was a seedy dive of a building where she, unlike her wealthy siblings had chosen to live out the remaining years of her life. My grandfather, who died a few months before I was born, had owned a Chinese restaurant in downtown Pasco for over thirty years. It burned down near the same time as lung cancer started to claim his existence. My Grandma worked day in and day out at the restaurant, and in loving her husband whom she married at a ripe age. Widowed, and without church, her only grandchild, a girl, became her reason to live.

Birthdays, and holidays seemed to merit a spending spree in the toy aisle at K-Mart. She would take me there, allow me to fill the cart with Barbies and accessories which I had to swear not to tell my dad about lest he have "a hissy fit." She was 4'11'', a plump and pretty Chinese woman whose laugh I will never get over, and think on some fifteen years later as I celebrate life's joys without her.

As her health deteriorated the effects became noticeable externally. Before suffering a crippling stroke, she experienced cataracts in her left eye. Emotionally, she wanted to enjoy our relationship the way she had, but stressful situations provided more strain. The night that Lindsey Lovette became my first and only guest to stay at Grandma's, haunts me to this day. My trouble making peer shamelessly shoved a gum wrapper into the couch cushion. When Grandma Marie found it she was furious. Outraged. She asked who had committed the crime, and neither of us wanted to own up to it. She stood staring at us with her left eye struggling to see, not really resembling the woman who had played such a central role in the first seven years of my life. Lindsey snickered at her from an arm chair. I wanted to crawl into the couch cushions with the gum wrapper for allowing such disrespect to play out in my Grandmother's home.
No one had treated her that way. And, at an immature age, of course I didn't know how to make restitution, I just chuckled along with Lindsey and tried to play it off.

I think it would have been less impressionable had her waning health not shown itself. Now, I look back and hope that she knew how much I truly adored her. How I wish she could have been at my wedding, or met our son. My great desire is that I will remember all of our jovial moments and put this one incident to rest. For regret will eat away at the soul.