For as long as I can remember, my grandfather never gave our family any peace. When I was little, he would come to our rented apartment and argue with my father and mother. I don’t know why, but I’m sure it wasn’t worth the arguments and nerves.
Grandpa had his own business, but he never tried to help Dad, because he was always out looking for a job, and Grandpa never offered him any money or any other help. Things became calmer for us only after we moved to another city, away from Dad’s parents. Somehow things got better, went on their own way-parents worked, I studied.
When I was in eighth grade, my grandfather had a stroke, which at first made him very bedridden and required constant care and help. Dad had to move in with his father, leaving my mother and me for a while. But even though Grandpa was getting better and was able to regain some function in his left arm and left leg, he still could not walk or even cook his own food. This forced our whole family to move in with him.
The apartment was small, old and shabby. New school, new jobs… Grandpa’s resentment, too. That probably drove my mother to the point where she filed for divorce and ran out on us, leaving three men in all this.
Dad tried his best to please Grandpa and help me pull my studies. I got in on a contract, had to pay every six months, and I just miraculously made it to graduation with our incomes. And then my dad was gone. It all started with a cold, which I should have just stayed home with, but my grandfather grumbled indiscriminately at my father, urging him to go to work, even waving one hand. So Dad went until he was in the hospital with a fever and died of inflammation.
It’s like I can’t leave Grandpa, and I don’t have the money to move. But how hard it is to be with him! He is an unbearable man, he does everything out of spite – he turns the same food over if he is not satisfied with something. He deliberately doesn’t wait to go to the bathroom. It’s like he’s testing me. And as soon as I give him a hint that I’m going to move, he goes silky for a couple of weeks.
It’s bad enough to wonder, but how much longer is he going to live and ruin everybody else’s lives? There’s no end in sight. Destroyed our family, and now he’s trying to get at me.
