by Eve Lopez

Created on: July 30, 2009

My grandfather died on a Wednesday evening.

When I got the news, I didn't know how to feel. Bad? Relieved? He was an old man, 99, who had caused a fair amount of misery in those years. He picked his favorite kids and shouted at the others. For their entire lives, he would berate two of his sons. One for being "stupid," one for being "fat."

But he was also a man who accomplished the American Dream that Mexican immigrants were promised a long time ago. He raised a family, bought a house and cars, and in retirement, traveled the world with my grandmother - Russia, China, Europe.

Upon his death, the hospital delivered a copy of a will that no one knew he had made. A will that left his small "estate" to his first child, the daughter of a short-lived marriage. A daughter he didn't raise. A daughter who was forever in battle with her stepmother, my grandmother. A daughter who would grow up to be a bitter, angry and unreasonable woman. My aunt.

I was never close to my grandfather; he barely knew who I was. But my dad chose to raise his family close to them, and it was my grandparents' house we always went to on Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving.

My grandmother, Theresa, is a strange lady. She knits oodles of blankets and scarves and booties for her great-grandchildren and drinks gallon after gallon of vodka. She rarely cooks and uses the same microwave she's had since the early 80s. She can also be quite the evil witch. She nags, complains and in general bitches about everything under the sun.

But when I saw her after my grandfather's funeral, I only saw a stunned and frail old woman who said to me, "What am I going to do now? I don't even know what to do with my time."

My grandparents lived in separate bedrooms for more than 30 years, and my grandmother still took care of him, even after she broke her hip. Even after her husband would become crazed and violent with dementia. And when she eventually realized that she and her son would not be able to handle him, she swiftly moved him into a nursing home a few miles from the house and drove there, every single day, to visit him.

I don't think she missed a single day.

The will that was unfurled like magic the evening of his death, was written in 1979. The will not only leaves his liquid assets and half of the house my grandmother lives in to his daughter, but very explicitly excludes his wife.

And hunched over her chair, the chair on the other side, the one my grandfather used to sit in, hollering in its emptiness, my grandmother said, "I keep trying to remember what happened back then. And I cannot remember."

My grandmother has her own money; when her kids reached their teens, she worked as a teacher, librarian and later, a secretary. She has a small Social Security income and Medicaid, and her needs are very small. She doesn't need her now-dead husband's money, but she does need her house.

But even that's not the point.

Sitting with my grandmother, a choke rose in my chest and I felt a great impotence. My grandmother is no picnic, not by a long shot, but she didn't deserve this.

She was probably no sweetheart in the marriage, but she was faithful to this man for 64 years. Raised his children, took his shit, and cleaned up his shit when his body started breaking down a few years ago.

She said to me, "I keep trying to remember what I did to make him write that will. What did I do?"

That's when I cried.

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