I loved my grandmother.
She was kind, loving, tragic and bought me fancy stamps when I was a kid.
In 1982 or 83, when I was released from jail, I hitchhiked up to Barrie, Ontario (that’s in Canada) to spend the weekend with my aunt and uncle, and grandma, who was living with them because her husband was hospitalized with Alzheimer’s.
She didn’t know I’d been incarcerated, just that I went missing for a few months.
On Sunday morning, my uncle and I went to the local store to get some stuff (he’s somewhere in that pic and was a tough hockey player) and he got a phone call: “Mom’s taken a bunch of pills, get home.”
So we went.
We got her into the car and I will never forgive myself for not sitting beside her in the back seat. Instead I was a petulant youngster, pissed off and angry.
We got to the hospital and two nurses tried to coax her out of the car into a wheel chair.
I said she’s dying, picked her up and carried her in.
Twenty minutes later she was dead.
The suicides of Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain have brought me back to that uncomfortable place and sunk me into a deep depression, that isn’t fair for my family, so I’m going to get professional help for the next week.
I’m grateful that I have access to skilled professionals at Damascus in Brisbane.
