Letter to an abusive grandfather on his deathbed.
Music:Snowfall by Scott Buckley / scottbuckleycreative Commons — Attribution 4.0 International — CC BY 4.0Free Download / Stream: http://bit.ly/2C39hQRMusic promoted by Audio Library • Snowfall – Scott Buckley (No Copyrigh...
Script:
This would be the last time I’d ever see my grandfather. He was dying and I hadn’t seen him in years. I wasn’t looking forward to it, not because I was sad but because I hate him and see no reason for this visit. He’d always treated everyone in my family like shit. And sometimes I’m not sure he even knows I exist. Not because he’s got memory loss but because I realised long ago that he doesn’t care about anyone except himself.He hurt everyone in my family.Back then with his hands. And when he started to decay physically he turned his abuse into words. And in some ways that was more potent.I remember Mum telling me that he’s never told her or anyone that he loves them. He’s never said it.When they say it to him he just moves ahead with the conversation.I don’t think he knows how to love. They say it’s because he never had love as a child, but I hate that excuse. He didn’t show any love to my mum either but she’s still able to care for me and show me love. There comes a point where you have to just work it out.As I was riding in the car I thought ‘Maybe I’ll tell him all of this when I see him. I’ll let him have it, stuff it. He’s going to die anyway so it doesn’t matter. Whatever afterlife he goes to, he can carry this with him for the rest of it.’ I kept talking myself up, salivating at all the things I was going to tell him, how I was going to make him hurt the way he made all of us hurt our whole lives. I just didn’t care anymore.As my Nan opened the door to our house I could already imagine how he’d be looking in the living room with his twisted smug smile on his face.I walked through the house and prepared myself for it, more ready than ever.But then…I saw him…And he didn’t look the way I imagined.He was laying in a hospital bed in the living room. He was so frail and so thin.He could barely look up at us. I walked up to him with Mum.He could barely make sense as he talked to us. Nothing he said was coherent.She talked to him for a while. Mostly just talking at him. He wasn’t sharp enough to keep up with the conversation.When it was my turn to talk, I thought about what I wanted to say… but... I couldn’t say any of it. He was such a horrible man all his life but now… now he’s so pathetic. And how can I confront someone like that. He’s not capable of inflicting the abuse he used to anymore. Not that he should be forgiven but it’s like confronting someone else for what he did. Anything I said to him couldn’t cause more pain than the pain he’s in right now.Then we had lunch with him there, with the rest of the family. I just stayed silent the whole time, thinking of the shell of a man he’d become.And on the car ride home, I thought – now I’m just going to have to live with it. I couldn’t even get closure on what I wanted to say to him. Even if I did say it to him it wouldn’t be the same, because he’s not the same man.
But I hate that's what my family will remember of him. Somehow this will soften all the horrible things he did to them. I hate how people rewrite history when someone dies.
Some people are just bad and that's how they should be remembered.
