Please Realize I‘m Detrimentally Educated. Be patient. If I live to be a senior citizen, I may even incline myself to gentle persuasions. But not today - today we fight reality, however ridiculous I appear to you or the rest of the world. I am blinded by pride. So spoke the albatross around my Grandmother’s neck…

I remember writing to my Grandmother when she was fast approaching her mid 80’s and still obstinate, obnoxious and ornery as an alley cat with hemorrhoids for a tail. We had often disagreed on matters and at one time had a falling out that bottomed out our relationship (speaking of hemorrhoids). Grandma was a bitch. She threw stones at the elderly neighbor on one side of her house, and threw dog shit on the neighbor’s car on the other side of her house. She was as welcoming as a bathtub full of cold vomit - or was that as bubbly as day old vomit in a wine glass for breakfast. You get the picture?

Anyway, I had written in response to one of her vitriolic conversations with her daughter (yes, my mother), telling her dear daughter that she was giving away all the land, the house, the gold plated china brought over from England by her parents, etcetera, because she didn’t want it in the family any longer. Spiteful, prideful, Bitch. Obviously grandmother and mother weren’t on the same page, although they were bound by family ties, they were like bookends meant to be kept at a distance from one-another. I responded immediately, and my letter was the model of hand-written simplicity, quote: There is no fool so great as an old fool.

It was many years before we spoke again. Grandma was now 92-years old and in need of help. I flew up with my mother to pick up Grandma in Upstate NY - but decided that I would take Grandma home with me to NC and place her in the nursing home that a friend of mine owned. Grandma was frail now, withered by time and battered by loneliness, she had not only shrunk - but was downright puny before the world hovering about her huddled caricature. As we were gathering her sparse belongings, I came upon a box of writings and opened it up, where to my serendipitous surprise, I found my letter. And dozens upon dozens upon dozens of copies of that simple letter in her handwriting: THERE IS NO FOOL SO GREAT AS AN OLD FOOL.

To make a long story short, Grandma lived for another year with me in NC. The nursing home was located between my business and my house, so I visited her 2-3 times a day, showing her around her new room (she was nearly blind but refused to have cataract surgery) every hour, and explaining the circumstances of her new life every half-hour! Then one day she said, “You know, I’m going to ask you the same stupid questions tomorrow?”. And I replied, ‘Then I’m going to give you the same stupid answers tomorrow!’. And we laughed. And we laughed away all the lost time, and the armoring once caked on thick as mud cracked and fell away as we gazed curiously at our clean slate where it was calligraphically hand-written: LOVE TRANSCENDS ALL CRIMES.

Shortly there-after, Grandma fell and shattered her hip in the bathroom. They also found several tumors in her lungs the size of golf balls. I moved a recliner into her room and spent 20-22 hours a day with her - for one to be sure that they honored her DNR (Do Not Resuscitate) secondly, to be sure they medicinally placated her terminal pain (they were not supposed to administer any extra narcotics for fear she would become addicted…?). And I thought death would vanquish her fleshly woes? Anyway, 2-days before her demise (she had ulcerated bed sores and had stopped eating and drinking) I leaned over and told her that I loved her and that it was okay to pass away, kissed her on the forehead and stood upright. Grandma opened her eyes and lightly said, “I love you”. Then she said it again, and again and again and again until she was literally singing “I love you”. I called her daughter so that she could hear this and when I pulled the phone back to talk to my mother, I heard her weeping melioratively. I waited, for some time, then my mother spoke to say, “She’s never said I love you before…to anyone”.

I think laughter penetrated her armor, from the inside out. She sang “I love you” for hours in the freedom of her truth expressed, then fell silent to never speak again in her smitten flesh. Pride had soiled Grandma like a stick in the mud. Showered by love she found her soul before her life was spirited away from her flesh. Who so wisely spake: It’s never too late!

The only way to love is the express route. Unexpressed love is forever lost - Tris.