Shock, Awe, and Elderly Relatives

[featherynscale]

Here follows an account of the most alarming thing that happened to me this weekend:

I arrived at the restaurant for the rehearsal dinner a little ahead of most of the rest of the party, so I was leaning against a post on their patio, when an elderly man who looked a bit like my father walked up to me. He had a little girl with him.

"You're Kimberly," he said.
I said, "Yeah."
"Do you know who I am?" I searched my brain and couldn't come up with anything reasonable.
"No, I'm sorry," I said, grinning the grin of 'Don't take offense, I'm a dumbass'. (This is a Southern survival skill.)
"I'm your Grampa Art."

Now this took me aback, and for good reason. As far as my addled brain can manage to recall, my mother told me that my Grampa Art was dead about ten or 12 years ago. And I haven't seen any of this side of the family very often, and certainly nobody beyond the immediate-family types, so I had no reason to doubt this information. But lo, there he was, looking quite alive and even healthy.

What I wanted to say was "I thought you were dead!". What I actually said was "My, you're looking well!".

I have decided to charitably assume that I was told that my grandfather was dead because someone had made some sort of error -- perhaps another of my father's relatives had died, and she was confused. Or, perhaps he had been very ill and she had just assumed that he had died. But I don't know, and I probably never will.

Comments

Re: ::also nodding head::

[saffronhare.livejournal.com]

Yeah, losing that buffer zone is no fun at all. I try to set the tone right away by making eye contact and speaking up with, "I'm Kit's daughter, who the hell are you?"

Hey. I didn't say it set a good tone.