Both Blanche and my Grandma Junie love, love, love to talk and often blur such lines to the detriment of those around them, though they truly mean no harm. In the end, Blanche and my Grandma are much the same as they implore others to see them in a good light even as they fib and lie because they refuse to accept the hands fate has dealt them. Lying to themselves and to others allows them to make life appear as it should be rather than as it really is. My Grandma Junie is the real life Blanche du Bois, minus the alcoholism and imprudent affairs with men. I still don't know her real age.
I see more and more of Blanche in my grandma these days. The retreat into private fantasies enables them to partially shield themselves from reality’s harsh blows. Grandma Junie is, in essence, living on borrowed time. My grandfather has dementia. He is probably dying. Her son, the "Golden Boy" died young (in his forties from unmanaged type 1 diabetes and mental issues). Children dying before parents just seems so wrong. My grandma's youngest son, my favorite uncle, disowned her and the family twenty years ago and hasn't been back since except for a brief and uncomfortable appearance at his brother's funeral, though he lives mere miles away. He is, according to my father (who likes to exaggerate), a paranoid schizophrenic, though I never thought so. My beloved father, the only child left, rarely visits or calls and has avoided the family reality by smoking pot and drinking, though he has successfully managed the family business my grandfather started for 35 years.
Unlike Blanche, my Grandma Junie does not drink and is not an alcoholic, though her health is ailing and she lives in denial about the unfortunate combination of her unwieldy sweet tooth and her (unmanaged) diabetes and painful arthritis. She also had shingles. Her husband of 61 years, my Grandpa Ray, though a good-hearted man, had a fierce temper for years and just isn't the same anymore. He is legally blind, must wear a catheter and urine bag due to failing kidneys and his mind is sometimes lucid, though more often than not,slips in the unyielding grip of dementia and Alzheimer's. He doesn't have much time left and sometimes it seems as though he is literally whithering away, day by day. Threats of life sans husband and confined to a nursing home loom. When visitors and nurses are gone, I can hear the yells and frustrated screams of my seemingly mild-mannered long suffering Grandma Junie through the hardwood floors, and I know it is now my Grandpa Ray's turn in front of the firing squad. The first time I heard my grandma yell and swear. I was shocked, and sure I was hearing things. Living above them for four months, I now know the truth.
My Grandma Junie's Belle Reve (translates from French to "Beautiful Dream) is not a southern plantation, but simply the simple home her husband built for her shortly after their marriage. This house we live in now (me in the apartment upstairs, my grandparents downstairs) is the very home my Grandfather built 58 years ago before such things as suburbs and malls, which now flood the area, existed. He simply built this home for his lovely new bride, the town Alderman's daughter, on the top of the hill, and so it stands today. I am quite sure my Grandma Junie will die here. There will be no nursing home for her. She will stay in her "Belle Reve" until she breaths her final breath on this earth, as it should be.
Like Stella in Streetcar, I am in the habit of serving my grandma cold drinks and fetching her things. Her classic line "Would you like a soda?" is my cue to fetch her a drink. She's not interested in my thirst, but instead, this is her demure way of asking without asking. It's a standing agreement with all who know her to prepare her a cold drink before coming into the living room. It's standard operating procedure. We all get a good chuckle out of it now that I called her on it.
My grandfather requires 24/7 care due to his ailing health, and the irony is that my Grandma Junie has turned his nursing staff into her personal servants. They manicure her nails, soak her feet, give her pedicures, take her to the beauty salon and upscale grocery store, buy her new clothes, wash her laundry, clean her house. What started as nursing care for just my grandfather has turned into nursing care plus personal attendants and maid service for both my grandpa and grandma. The help, for the most part, concurs because I do believe they received well deserved raises.
My grandmother desperately clings to the bits of control and freedom she has left, and that is over her own mind and perspective--oh, and little things like telling the nursing staff how to slice the pie or how to set the table. They're not there as nursing staff in her mind, but to assist her in her daily life. Like Blanche, my grandmother often leaves the realities of the world behind and retreats into her own fantasies, her memories and the recesses of her own mind in order to avoid accepting reality. In order to escape fully, however, both must come to perceive the exterior world as that which she imagines in her head. This is why my grandmother almost let my grandfather die. She didn't care for him because she didn't see it. He was so ill and weak, his kidneys and insides so desperate that he was moments from death, but my Grandma Junie was oblivious. Luckily, my father was there and was able to take him to the hospital before it turned fatal.
My grandma is a stubborn woman--she sees what she wants to see, and ignores the rest. For years, family members simply comment that Junie sees the world through rose-colored glasses; it may be deluded some extent, but fantasy has often saved her pain, though reality bursts forth in the end.
Like Blanche, my grandmother refuses to tell anyone her true age or to appear in harsh light that will reveal her faded looks. My grandmother wears make-up to shield her vitaligo and wrinkles, and is embarrassed to be seen without her hair done or make-up on. My Grandma Junie also lives in the past, retelling stories of her youth and dates with many suitors, especially around my grandfather. She develops crushes on all manner of men, especially men younger than herself, like my ex-boyfriend from Norway and the husbands of my sister and cousin. She even fained illness and claimed my grandfather couldn't breathe, so as to solicit attention from the nursing help last night, bringing the young male nurse and her favorite Blond female nurse rushing over to her rescue Friday evening. Clearly, nothing was truly wrong, as she never called me down, and I'm only a few steps away in the apartment upstairs. Everyone was frustrated and upset, having been "played" and worried over nothing except the drama created by such lies. Like Blanche, my grandmother believes that her fibbing is only her means of enjoying a better way of life and is therefore essentially harmless. Unfortunately, this is often not the case, and those closest end up hurt.
And yet....after the play finished, my heart hurt for Blanche du Bois, just as my heart goes out to my Grandma Junie, whom I love dearly, despite her human foibles and mental illusions (delusions?). I don't mean to sound harsh to my beloved Grandma Junie, but I realize now how very close in mind and spirit she really is to Ms. Blanche du Bois. I'm sure a psychiatrist would have a heyday with her, but she's in her eighties and no one's gonna change her now. And why try? If it works for her, and it has for many, many years, so be it. I suppose there are worse things than insisting on seeing life through rose-colored glasses and always depending on the kindness of strangers.
