Oh my God. My dad is officially annoying me to the Nth degree.
You may remember, a while back after his not-so-fabulous prognosis of Stage 3 cancer in his brain, I asked if he'd write down some memories of stuff so after he's gone his grandchildren can still get to know him. Both my kids and my sister's potential kids. Because there are still so many things I wish I knew about my grandparents and great-grandparents. So I asked him about it tonight in between his rantings about my mom (don't get me started - but I seriously wanted to ask "So if you hate her so much, why don't you get a freakin' divorce?" numerous times).
His reply in a nutshell? "No." Because he basically doesn't care.
I asked him "So you don't want your grandchildren to know anything about you? At all? I don't even know anything from your younger years. And come on, not many people can say they grew up in a chicken coop."
"Nope. It's better to live in the future."
I really wanted to strangle him. So, I guess my kids will never know their grandpa. He basically ignores them when he "stays" with us (aka using us as a hotel room), and I'm going to try my darnedest to not attempt to color my children's view of him with how crappy he's been to me. Gah. I guess my kids will know the neighbor's grandpa better - my 4yo already knows who "H's Grandma!" is, he's met her several times and thinks she's great. Even if he does tire her out. Even H's grandpa probably spent more time playing with him at H's un-birthday part than my dad has in like a year.
It's just his perpetual selfishness. I'm really starting to get sick of it.
Comments (5)
My grandfather died of several different diseases a few years back.
The only things I know of him is what my mom and her siblings tell us.
We all have our own stories of Grampa, wether we choose to
remember how crappy he was at time, or how often he called us
Sh*t *sses when he had altzheimers. :) I guess it's collecting stories
from families, and not knowing every detail of his life that makes us
remember him so well.
... don't strangle him :) he loves you.
I think I've decided that I'll share what I know biographically and geographically about them, and then if the kids really want more context then we can do all kinds of cool internet research on the time period and the location where they lived and worked. That way, they can kind of add context where it is missing. And skip all of the stupid bullcr@p that the clueless adults pass on or refuse to pass on.