Two Words
My grandmother’s name is Anna.
It’s a derivative of our family’s saint name Antonio. Antonio, Anna, Antonetta, Antoinette; which is my middle name and my legacy to pass on.
Anna has dementia. It’s genetic. It is what is slowly taking her, while we watch. It isn’t the fact that death is holding my grandmother’s hand, not for me. Death is imminent for everyone. For me, to watch a powerhouse matriarch slowly crumble to rubble, the loss of dignity, and the selfishness of my own fears.
Today she looked me in the eye and there was no recollection. It is inevitable, yet the knife still struck deep. I watched her shuffle away, clearly upset that she needed to know me but couldn’t. A soul has left, but the car is still running. I was surprisingly shaken.
Am I sad that she doesn’t know me at all?
Am I scared to live in a world where my grandmother isn’t there?
Is this my future?
I grew up with my grandmother as a static part of a rather tumultuous childhood. She is the matriarch. The monument I have based most of my ideas of feminism on. Formidable and daunting in a small package, Anna is not the one to poke if you are looking for a fight. Even now, deep into the disease, she still packs a punch. That is who Anna will always be. A fighter.
Italian women are a force to be reckoned with, straight out the gate. I can not explain why the last dredges of our Roman ancestors possibly. Regardless, the Italian woman is an interesting feat of strength. We are raised to be subservient and yet also to buck the system at every turn. Be a proper lady but take no shit mentality was something that was bestowed upon me as I grew up. Not from my mother, but from my grandmothers.
Anna was raised in the mountains of Southern Italy during the Second World War. Running wild and causing trouble. Free. Kicking through the prison of her sex. She decided ultimately to go through life with as much heat as she could muster, regardless of the consequences. Maybe she knew deep down the juice of youth would be worth the squeeze, because the consequences came heavy and swift after she left for Canada.
For my grandfather was a sick man. Not unkind or evil. But very sick. The kind of sick you can’t have while trying to raise three girls in a country where you don’t speak the language. The kind of sick where you have to take the hits to protect your girls. The kind of sick that will take you and your whole family out with one fatal shot. The kind of sick that leaves deep scars you can never show to anyone.
The stone that Anna used to protect herself and her children was granite, flamed with rough edges that often scraped and cut you as you tried to grow. It’s the Italian way. I know from my own scrapes and cuts, my own granite coat.
That was the Anna I knew. This is the Anna I learned to understand and deeply respect as a woman because this woman knew not to buckle. She knew that she would never be able to properly explain why things had to be hard, so she just kept going. Fuck ‘em. A statue will never show indignity, will never show anything less than elegant pride. Stoic and strong.
But Anna is more than a statue. She allowed me to see her depth of compassion briefly.
I was 23. Young and suffering, unable to fight for myself, to even leave my bed for days.
My grandmother came and sat at my side. She said to me two words. Two words only.
“I’m sorry.”
Tears filled her eyes and slowly ran. It was this moment I realized she knew. She understood my mother, my aunts, her own sisters. I understood the level of pain she felt, knowing what comes along with a problematic DNA strand. She knew what it meant to have children with my grandfather and the illness he brought in. Yet she knew she would be strong enough to get these girls to be a part of society, that whatever good came from the souls of my ancestors would be strong enough to fight against the genetic garbage.
Two words can change a lot.
I had a complicated relationship with Anna. Grandsons in Italian culture are treated as the second coming of the Messiah. The granddaughters are different. We are raised differently. The paradoxical upbringing I had with my grandmother was hard. Confusing. Tough love has a line and often my grandmother crossed it.
Yet, laying in that bed, 23 years old, scared to be alone with my thoughts, this woman came in. With two words I was able to bind with her. With two words she showed me a whole new level of love I never knew was possible. With two words, she showed me herself; raw, unprotected, and scared.
Those two words have been uttered to me countless times in my life. Never have they held as much weight as when Anna said them to me that day. I doubt they ever will again.
Of all my memories of my grandmother, this is somehow my favourite.
I am sometimes filled with a sense of relief that my grandmother has lost those memories. Most of us will end with all of our past, running through our head like a cliché film reel. Not Anna. Her past has gone, me along with it. She is able to walk around without remembering and if I hadn’t seen that pain of not being able to know me, I would almost envy her.
My grandmother is gone. Anna still stands strong.
The reality of her situation is a tough pill to swallow. I wanted more for her twilight. She deserved more. I selfishly wonder about myself as I empathize with her.
Without my mind, who am I?
Without my knowledge, without my humour, without my imagination; how can I exist?
Will there be someone there to hold on to as I lose myself?
Can I survive losing my independence?
I see those same terrifying thoughts in my mother’s eyes every time she comes home from visiting Anna. I see it in my aunts. It is overwhelming.
Yet, somewhere deep inside, Anna’s voice rings through and I know it will be different for me. Although intertwined, I am not her and she is not me.
As new generations come up, we are able to pick and choose the things we want to carry on. That is what the legacy is. The name we are given holds the roots, but not the baggage. For me to grasp onto Anna’s past, something she herself has let go of would be an injustice to our name.
Whatever pain may have been held by me released with those two words.
I’m sorry.
It’s mine to hold, you go forward.
So for Anna, I move on.