Sympathy for the Devil

The greatest leaders in the world are loved not feared, or the saying goes something like that, right? I was going to write that I thought this had something to do with humility, but then I remembered Bill Clinton. Without getting too far off track, and writing about all sorts of examples and counterexamples to the humility argument, I want to write this: My grandmother is NOT an example of a great leader...but she thinks she should be. As in, "I command respect. I am the elder and you will bow to me. I can be as rude to you as I want, but I am the matriarch so I am infallible." Maybe because she has no humility, I automatically jumped to this trait as something missing from great leaders. But I think it's the combination of that, in addition to never having anything nice to say (particularly to her family), and acting like...well..for lack of a more totally appropriate term...a JAP (Jewish American Princess). She'll do things like bang her plate on the table and say, "I'm finished. You can take this now." Or, "Becky, get me some juice." Without a please. There's never a please or thank you or even the connotation of pleasantry. She's recently moved in with my mother and, not surprisingly, is driving everyone crazy with her lack of sweet-old-lady-ness.

I mean I guess I would grant her some leeway if she was a holocaust survivor who felt that she was now owed something in life (though, she still should at least be nice to her relatives). Or if she had been different before my grandfather had died. But she's not. She grew up spoiled, married a man who spoiled her and never had to do any hard work in her life. And that's how she likes it and wants it to be. And she expects everyone to treat her as such.

Now in most cultures, yes, you respect your elders. You don't have an overwhelming desire to scream in their face when they treat you like their slave. But I'm telling you, it's different with her. She's just down-right no fun to be around. And don't even get me started on how she uses guilt and passive-aggressiveness in most of her sentences. Though to be fair, she also is just aggressive sometimes.

And then two weeks ago, she fell and broke her arm. She's been in a rehab/nursing home since then. As if being 90 and having a broken bone isn't bad enough, here's the thing: we all kind of thought she was faking it. No one saw her fall and she said she didn't want to go to the hospital, that it didn't hurt that badly. So we thought she was making it up, because, you see, my mom had broached the subject with her, the night before, of possibly having her move into an assisted living, adult community place. God forbid! Not twelve hours later, she tells my mother she'd fallen. Seemed suspicious. But probably not to anyone else. Only to us, it was like the manipulative dance she's been doing all of our lives. And it really shitty that we all responded that way, because, you know, in fact, she had broken her arm. But it took a day to get her to the hospital because she didn't make it seem urgent and so we all thought it couldn't possibly be urgent. It was just Nana being Nana, always needing to be the center of attention, always needing to make everyone feel like they're not doing enough for her.

So there she is in rehab. And we go visit her on Day 1. Not day 7 or 18, but Day 1. First thing she says, "Why isn't your mother here? She said she was going to come visit." Followed up by, "The food is terrible. Why didn't your mother bring me a sandwich?" And the crescendo, "You know your mother and I had a tiff the other night, and I was probably so upset that that's why I fell."

Maybe between the lines she was saying , "Oh, it's so good to see you." Or "Thanks for coming to visit me." Or even"Let's talk about the weather." I mean, honestly, she maybe said all those things, too. But it's hard to hear them when you're trying to silence the voices in your head yelling at the rude 90-year-old grandmother who won't for two seconds stop trying to make everyone feel guilty for her plight in life. Maybe this is unfair in this particular situation, but after 34 years of hearing this stuff, it's unfortunate that I can no longer feel differentially irritated in situations where I should genuinely feel bad for her.

And think about my mother! Oy vey, it's heaped on her nonstop about about 1000 times the rate. This, of course, just complicates my sympathy for Nana, as I feel like I need to play defense for my mother. Since I have the fiery streak of Nana (yes, I admit it, I'm like her, but hopefully not in the spoiled princess way), I want to scream at her to lay off the awful head of no-good crap she's spewing at her own daughter. I can't imagine treating my kids that way. (I've thought that for awhile, but now that I have my own kids, I finally feel justified in saying this.)

Of course, many people say that she's an old woman (and now in rehab) so we should just let her be. There's no point in trying to rationalize with her, or tell her how she makes us feel. But I call bullshit on that. Maybe if she had earned instead of demanded our respect over these years. If she had had humility and tenderness, instead of being rude and abrasive, then it would be easier to let it slide now. But why should being old make it okay to, frankly, be an asshole?

Still, guilt seeps from my fingers as I type this.