I have this grandmother

Well, we all do[did], right?

This grandmother of mine, she lives about 10 miles from me, or a 30-40 minute drive in Philadelphia traffic.

She's one of the most intelligent people I know. She's a champion rower, a violin maker and repair-person, an Ivy League graduate... Most of all, she has always been fiercely independent. She has a wonderful sense of humor and (aside from one childhood incident when she told me to stop fighting with my sister on a car-ride and my feelings got hurt), she has been nothing but kind.

She has had a hard life. She grew up in Nazi Germany; she had little-to-no communication with her father during war time. Her mother sent her away to a boarding school and made it clear she wasn't wanted at home, excepting school vacations. She's prone to depression. She has an addictive and obsessive personality. She went through the traumatic death of her [now beloved] mathematician father, suffered a tumultuous divorce, dealt with debilitating migraines through the middle age, and amongst other tragedies, eventually succumbed to the temptations of prescription drugs.

She's recovered from the latter now, and amazingly, she seems to have figured out a new start to her life at age 80+. But still -- (and this is entirely my judgement) I feel like she could have done so much more and it's hard for me to watch someone extraordinary live this ordinary end to her existence.

For the past few years that I've lived in Philadelphia, I've had a resistance about going to visit her... it's not because I don't love her, because I do. I want to get to know her better; I want to spend time with her before she dies.

And so, I wasn't really quite sure why I was having such a hard time fitting in the visits. It's not pure selfishness, because I certainly do many other giving and unselfish things for my family and friends.

Then today, on my drive to work, I realized something that kind of made my head explode.

I'm just like this grandmother.

I've always associated myself with my mother, and my mother's tendencies. After-all, I look a hell of a lot like my mother, and I certainly seem to have followed in her footsteps. As a psychiatrist aunt once asked me, "How does it feel to be repeating your mother's life?"

And so yes, I get a lot from my mother, and that's not a bad thing. But then today, I realized how similar I am to my dad's side of my family too, especially his mother.

I'm prone to depression and, to some extent, migraines. I'm smart, even if I'm not as smart as her. I'm obsessive, sometimes to a fault and sometimes to my benefit. I certainly have an addictive personality. And of course, I'm independent until I trust someone else enough to let them in.

But, mostly... I'm so scared of not doing what I want to do with my life. I'm scared of the years passing by and looking back from the confines of a retirement home and just not being sure what I did, if I loved or was loved, and if I gave enough of myself to the world. I want to make a difference, not because I want to pretend immortality, but because I know I have something to give.

These paternal grandmother characteristics are not all bad -- they're just... volatile. Combined, they have the ability to create something wonderful or dissolve into tragedy. They are who I am, and I have to figure out how to use them to my benefit, so they don't end up consuming me.

I'm not saying my grandmother has been unsuccessful... she has experienced a full life, I'm sure in many ways that I can't even begin to conceive. I'm also not saying these are new or original thoughts; Of course there are many people just like me and just like my grandmother.

It's just that I [now] see so much of myself in her -- if nothing else, I know why it's hard for me to get in my car and visit.