Nana (pictured here with Uncle Saddam)
My grandmother, pictured above with her second favorite dictator, passed away Friday night. This is the same grandmother I've written about previously. She was suffering from the late stages of Alzheimer's, and her death, while sad, was merciful.
Eileen was the oldest of 15 children. She raised many of her younger brothers and sisters as if they were her own children, and supported many of them, paying for college and other expenses, just like a parent. She was the matriarch to the Irish Catholic side of my family. By the time I knew her, she was the very strict, serious, older lady that you didn't dare disappoint. She was very religious, never swore, was fair to each grandchild to a fault, and disapproved of fully half of anything that a child would do. This isn't to say that she didn't love – she cared deeper than she showed, and loved everyone equally and unconditionally. But you sure as fuck didn't want to do anything to disappoint her. "You had better hope that your Nana doesn't hear about this!" was a familiar mantra heard around my home. Today, I got the chance to interview her posthumously which means, thankfully, that her mental state had returned to how she used to be. (NOTE: The following is a PARODY and in no way reflects my actual grandmother, who was about as close to a saint as you could possibly be.)
Me: Hi Nana.
Nana: Hi dear.
Me: I'm sorry you're not here anymore. I miss you.
Nana: Is that why you only visited me once when I was in the home?
Me: It was too hard to see you like that. And I didn't think you'd really want any of us to see you in that state.
Nana: So does this mean you're skipping my funeral too?
Me: If it wasn't to be there for Mom and Papa, I wouldn't go to that, either.
Nana: And what's this I hear about you getting a divorce?
Me: Ohhh, ummm, yeah.
Nana: You know you're going to hell, right?
Me: For getting a divorce? That's not fair.
Nana: No, not for the divorce – that's just what you get for living in sin before you got married.
Me: Then why?
Nana: Because I can see everything now – and there is no way God is letting you into heaven with all of that porn you look at.
Me: You can see THAT?!?
Nana: Yes, and you should be ashamed of yourself. If I wasn't already dead, finding out that there's something called "tranny porn" would have killed me on the spot. And then how would you have liked finding out that you killed your poor grandmother?
Me: But I didn't! And that was just for research purposes.
Nana: You need a hand down your pants to research?
Me: I . . Uh . . Um . . .
Nana: I'm just fucking with you.
Me: NANA!!!
Nana: What? Can't a woman drop an f-bomb on you?
Me: Not when you're my Nana, and I've never even heard you say "hell"!
Nana: I usually reserved that type of language for the bedroom.
Me: Oh God.
Nana: You don't want to hear about me and your grandfather having sex? You do know that your mother wasn't immaculately conceived, even if she's convinced you she was, right?
Me: No no no no no no (rocking back and forth)
Nana: I used to joke that your Papa's name was destined to be Howie . . .
Me: Please stop (crying)
Nana: . . . as in "how he makes me feel down there"
Me: shh shh shh shh no shhh shh
Nana: And by "down there", I mean my vagina.
Me: GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA…..
Enjoy this interview? Check out my other dead (mostly) celebrity (mostly) interviews:
Roy Scheider
Zelda Rubinstein and J.D. Salinger
Brittany Murphy
Oral Roberts
John Lennon
Ken Ober
Henry Gibson
Patrick Swayze
Ted Kennedy
John Hughes
Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett
Walter Cronkite
Billy Mays
Ed McMahon
Stephen Hawking
Robert Novak
Caylee Anthony
David Carradine
Martin Luther King, Jr.
