Grandmother Klarissa, my father’s mother, died when I was 7. My love for her was profound. A child needs an adult woman’s love, and that love I could only get from her. This love has carried be forward my entire life.
Grandmother Klarissa and my mother were in a constant tug of war over me, over my father, over the correct way of living. There was a long-standing vendetta between them, but I was a small child and it mattered to me that with grandmother I felt loved. That was unusual and special to me. When she died at the age of 54 of leukemia, I was distraught. Nobody talked to me about my grief or about her death. I had to cope with the loss on my own, biting down on my tears in silence. I didn’t get to go to the funeral and her death was mentioned to me casually, in passing. To this day, I can’t think about her death without tears.
When I turned 9, my grandfather gave me a colorful box that he had asked his friend to paint just for me. The box contained my grandmother’s jewelry. It had been crafted according to her own special design. Grandfather told me that this was my grandmother’s legacy, that I would grow up and wear her jewelry and be beautiful and brilliant, just like she had been. He said that if I wore her jewelry, it would be as if a part of her had never died. Klarissa died when my sister was just a baby, so they never had a relationship, but of course there was a gift of jewelry from grandmother for her, too.
I got married at 19. When I left for the honeymoon with my husband, I left the keys from my new apartment to my mother. Repairmen were coming over, and somebody had to unlock the door for them. I hid grandmother’s jewelry very well in the apartment. But when I came home, the box was nowhere to be found. I walked over to my parents’ place and asked my mother about the jewelry. She giggled.
“This is so funny,” she said. “Look what happened. I was out with my friend Galya and she was buying jewelry. And I thought I wanted jewelry, too, and it’s not fair that I can’t buy anything. So I went to your place and looked for your grandmother’s jewelry. You hid it really well, but I still found it. Ha, ha! Then I took it to a jewelry store. I asked them to dig out the precious stones and melt the whole thing. I also gave them the rings your grandfather gave to your sister. They are so ugly anyways! So that’s what the people at the jewelry shop did. And they made this gold chain for me out of it. It’s way thicker than my friend Galya’s chain.”
I didn’t have words to say anything. I just wanted her to stop.
“But you won’t tell your father, right?” she continued. “This will upset him because it was his mother’s jewelry. You don’t want to hurt your father, do you? Don’t you love him? He will be shattered! You couldn’t do this to your own Dad, could you?”
I went home and cried for weeks. But I never told my father because I didn’t want to hurt him.
Clarissa's Blog 
terrible. just terrible.
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This is just a millionth part.
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I’m sure.
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wow, I don’t know how you still talk to your mom! I commend you for your strength.
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Holy shit fuck. I hope that makes it through the spam filter, because it is an appropriate expression of how messed up that (and the other story) is. Seriously. I’ve accidentally hurt the feelings of people I care about before, more often than I’d like… but how screwed up do you have to be do stuff that bad, and as you’ve said do it about a million times, and not get better/apologize? I’m so sorry you had to deal with that.
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The best part is that you did grow up to be brilliant and all the rest, just as you would have with the jewels.
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Your mother is jealous of you. She wants your precious things. I don’t know what those things are exactly – maybe your father’s love, maybe your talents – but if she can’t have them, she will at least take the proxy jewelry.
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I agree with Lewis Carroll — I can forget, but I can never forgive.
Neither will the Crown, as it turns out, and they appear to have a considerably better memory …
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I tried commenting before and it didn’t take… All the comment said was “Holy shit.”
I have gathered from the general tenor of your writing about your family that you think very highly of your dad and your sister, while the was… conspicuously absent.
I am so sorry.
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Well, that is quite criminal and also pathological. Ay…
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Your mother and my mother should get together and have a crazy bitch party. I’m so sorry. It sucks to have that person who is supposed to love you be crazy bat shit crazy terrible. I want you to know that I had a really complex and terrible relationship with my mother, and because of some recent stuff (actually having to do with inheritance issues from the death of her mom — so interestingly connected to the issues you’re talking about here: apparently this is what makes crazy bitches go over the top), I stopped talking to her and stopped having a relationship with her because it was finally so clear. And I feel so much peace about it. Our relationship — trying to be a good daughter who honors her mother in some way especially being a mom myself, wondering if continuing to have a relationship with her was evidence of my own low self-esteem because surely I’d put up with enough crap — was no longer on my back. She’d made her choice (long ago really), and that was it. I want you to know that this kind of choice is totally okay and does not make you a bad person. (The most wonderful part of the book Toxic Parents is how it clearly says: you don’t have to forgive them; you don’t have to do anything. It’s up to you.)
I’m so sorry about your son.
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