Matriarch Warrior
Today I spent time in my Matriarch's town, in what will be the last time I see her alive. Although my memories of her are of a bitter-tongued crone in survival, her memories have now fallen out of her mind like
sparkling
murderous
diamonds.
I walked the driveway to her shoebox apartment, holding my eldest son's hand. To my right was the house my grandfather once lived in. I didn't look, but I could feel it there. The house. If houses could beg, this one was screaming at me to peek over the fence. I didn't. With my son's soft and innocent fingers laced around mine, I remembered the wet, slippery hand of the man I called Pa. Wet from the disease he gave himself. He tried to forget his sin by drowning them with the drink. Unsuccessful, he died with a brain full of memories. That was his punishment in the end. His ex-wife will die with a brain that can no longer bear remembering. Grace lies in her dementia. God knows it has been so tough for her. As I walked the long path to her door, I was taken back to my last conversation with him.
I was holding his hands and crying over how broken he was. The tears were not for how much I loved him, they were for how much I didn't. They were for the women in my blood-line who he had marred with his slipperiness. Although he tried to find an affection and love for me, although he was a good enough grandfather in that his distance meant he never harmed me, I was acutely aware of the fires he left in his wake. So like any good grand-daughter would, I begged him to find a wholeness in his last moments on this earth. With a solid determination, I dragged his aged and defeated body to a church. I thought that maybe if he met with God before passing, he would be relieved of pain in the afterlife.
I sat on his lap, in an old wooden pew, and felt a desperation so strong it moved him to tears.
"Do it!" I wanted to scream.
"Say sorry!" I wanted to scream.
"Make up for it!" I wanted to scream.
I knew that I was sitting on the lap of a man who had done unforgivable things. I rested my head on his chest, tears streaming down my face, as I listened to the heartbeat of shame. Here I was, a seven year old girl staring in the eyes of a terribly destructive man. I don’t believe he ever found healing, in the end. My matriarch however - who I have had very little to do with - taught me how to fight. She taught me how to cut down a person before they can cut me down first. This one is a skill I am not proud of, yet I am a reluctant master of it. I have spent the last ten years trying to re-wire this skill, I don’t want it anymore and yet it seems to be engrained in the fibres of me. My grandmother taught me how to stand tall and face a demon, and yet weep fervently the moment I have closed the door with nobody around to watch me ache. Until today, I have always been bitter that she was my matriarch. Why her? I would have preferred someone who could point me to the wise map, instead. I would have preferred a woman who remembered how to make healing, instead. I would have preferred to sit at her feet and take notes on the road she has travelled before me. However, this woman was so nasty for so long. But then one day I finally understood - the story within the story.
In my final words to her this morning, I told her how grateful I am for the lessons she has taught me. Lessons I never wanted to learn, but ones that have saved me over and over again.
I am strong because she was first.
I am unsinkable because she was first.
I see these qualities in my own daughter, her great-grand daughter. The gift she has passed down to us is bigger than anything anyone could have given us. I wish I could have been my matriarch’s mother, I would have held her and kept her safe. Yet I am just her granddaughter. It was right that I stand at a distance and watch a warrior. As I walked away, I turned around to find her waving with both hands and then she lowered her head and gave a little bow. She has turned into a little girl now. Her shoulders have dropped under the weight of a lifetime of abuse; abuse she has worn and also inflicted upon others as a result. The generational cycle of that shame is not lost on me. Sometimes I have found myself in my therapist’s room weeping from the guilt of sins I never committed, yet bear the brunt of from passed ancestors. This is a cross I have learned I do not have to bear.
I once heard that those who exit this world with dementia do so because they need to right the wrongs of their childhood. They drop their memories so that they have the capacity to transform back into their own child's body. For the week that I spent with her, fixing up her garden and making cups of tea, she told me stories of the days she was a dancer, of the feelings her parents held towards her and of the scars she wore while married to a broken man. I simply knelt before her and listened, while massaging her feet. I silently prayed that she would find the balm her soul is still desperately seeking.
I sat in my car, turned on the engine, and smiled with gratitude for all she has taught me. As I drove past her apartment one last time, I saw her still standing there. She was waving with both hands, with a big smile stretched across her face, she was probably wondering who I was.