I can see her right in front of my inner eye. Shes standing there, her long white hair braided into two braids laying on her back. She wears a dark grey - black coat and looks out the window. She seems so calm. i know she went through a lot in her live and i always admired her for her strength. She was my idol. If she got through all of this i can as well. At least thats what i thought but i appeared to be wrong. Again.
My Nan is a lovely lady, always has a open ear for me and gives me comfort when i need it. i always thought she was the only one to understand me. I basically grew up with just her and my mom, my dad wasn’t really in the picture and she took his place. She collected me from childcare and later school when my mom had to work long, stayed over the whole night when my mom couldn’t be at home and was there for every single one of my birthdays, my first and last days of school and every other special occasion. She took me shopping and always knew what i would like, she made the best cake and potato salad i’ve ever had and always knew and understood how i felt. Throughout the years i had a few difficulties to master and she always knew how to calm me down. She gave me strength to keep going and see the positives in life, she had herself a really bad relationship with her stepdad back in time and when i struggled with accepting the fact that my mom got married again and her husband and i didn’t get on back then she was the only one i could talk about it too.
But i was wrong, completely wrong, she wasn’t even close to who i thought she was. Nothing will ever change the fact that she’s my Nan and i love her unconditionally there was a lot i didn’t know about her, a lot that broke my heart because the women i wanted to be like when i grow up wasn’t even half as strong as i thought and a lot of things i valued on her weren’t always like this.
When my mom was 16 her parents split um, her dad moved out and her mom had a new guy over every night until she finally disappeared completely. My mom was left alone as a young women not knowing how to pay for the bills and study for her leaving cert at the same time. My Nan meanwhile kept sleeping around, dated different men to cope with her divorce and left everything stressful, including her family behind. She became depressed and started drinking. Soon it got out of hand, she couldn’t control her alcohol consume anymore, it was the only thing that made her happy, made her forget and allowed her to feel joy again. I guess that was her way of finding freedom until she overstepped a line and became an alcoholic. Her whole life was about alcohol it was what she thought the one thing that helped her fighting her depressions. And then I was born.
My mom had no contact to her for more then a decade until she had me. As i turned 1 year my mom left my father and was all on her own. Most of her friends let her down after the break up, sticked with my dad. It is obviously not an easy task to be a single mother, you can’t leave the house, can’t socialize and its even hard to work full time because the open hours of the childcare are limited and very expensive. But we needed the money, so my mom rang her mother and she was delighted to meet me, but there was one condition for that to happen: no alcohol.
At the beginning my mom didn’t trust my Nan at all, she wasn’t allowed to be alone with me or anything but over the years things changed and we grew to a good, little, strong and independent family. And then my mom married again. I didn’t get on with my stepdad at all. It was awful, i felt like he was taking my mom away from me. They started talking bad about my Nan, i never heard my mom saying a bad word about her before, never, but now it became a normal thing. I remember how my stepdad told her to cut my Nan out of her life, that shes toxic and we’re better off without her. I can’t really explain why but those words hurt me a lot, my Nan was a holy women to me and at that time the only one i trusted, my hate towards my stepdad grew, i felt like he wanted to take everyone who was important to me away from us, first my dad, now my Nan, i was shattered. Now i know that he just wanted the best for us but i think it would have been better if we would have stayed on her side and supported her being sober. I truly believe that without him she would still be part of our family.
Nan cleaned our house and therefore we supported her financially, it was a good deal, she got something to do with her time, distraction from her depressions, we had a clean house what saved us time and i had my Nan over at least once a week. Those were the best days, she always left sweets for me and made my room all nice, it was magical to me.
Then the day came my mom announced her second pregnancy. And that’s when i last properly saw my Nan. She didn’t come the next week to do the cleaning, she left a letter but mom would’t let me read it, she just said that Nan is not coming back but i din’t believe it, she was always there, she would never leave me , she knows i need her. I was so naive.
She really was the most important person to me, my relationship to my mom got really bad since her husband and i hated each other and i kept a lot of secrets of her. My Nan was the only one i could tell those secrets and she just left me. I couldn’t cope with it the only person who i thought would never leave me did exactly that. My world broke down, i waited for weeks, months even years for her to come back but not a sign of her. I blamed myself. I thought i wasn’t good enough for her to stay, how could she leave me?
Just recently I started talking about it to my mom, she couldn’t explain me why Nan left but she told me why she doesn’t contact me anymore. She din’t want me to see her like this, a depressed alcoholic who doesn’t have her life under control, for me she should still be the strong, independent woman I admired.
13 years she stayed strong as a dry alcoholic, but once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic.
I started getting in touch with her again, even met up with her once and damn i missed her so much. She is still my Nan, i don’t care that she might have a drinking problem or struggles with depressions, i want to be there for her like she was there for me. But i learned of her mistakes and i try to not do them myself, I won’t leave her when it gets difficult, because that when you need each other the most. That’s what family is there for isn’t it? Forgive and support each other.
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