Ghost of the past

The trip to the cemetery...was awful.
It reminded me how much I miss Aunt Joan. Not to mention that Christmas just passed. And Grandma, she took it hard. Aunt Joan was her second to oldest daughter. She said it killed her when I told her about her passing. I could tell. Not only did Grandma look her age, but she looked like she had been crying since we had our phone conversation. Maybe she is sincere, after all?
We spent more than an hour at the grave site. I told her stories of the final years of Aunt Joan's life. We laughed. We cried. We even argued, but it was nothing major.
Before we left, I stopped her at Skylar's grave and introduced them. Skylar's grave wasn't too far from Aunt Joan's. I think Aunt Joan planned it that way. She loved Skylar like she was her own. I know it sounds strange, but I wanted Grandma to know how important Skylar was and is in my life. When I told her what had happened, she cried with me and held me like she used to when I was a kid. Over dinner, I shared that part of my life with her. The part of my life that was so full of love and compassion. She said that I helped her see my life from a different point of view. Different from the hate and violence my family had always thought of it.
That's when I made the point that it was just that. My life. My love. My pain. My everything. And the way I planned on keeping it.
She promised that she understood. But then she begged for me to give her a chance. A chance to love me like she used to. A chance to be my family again. A chance to be Grandma. A chance to make up for all the years that had been taken away from both of us...by force, as she explained it.
I always knew my grandfather was a horrid man, but when she explained some of the things he had done and some of the things he wanted to do to me, I shook to my core. He really was plotting to kill me. Grandma swore she did everything in her power to keep that from happening. I told her that she did a great job, since I was still breathing. But I'm sure Aunt Joan had a thing or two to do with it too...she would have never told me. I was a kid for goodness sakes.
I won't show Grandma where I live just yet. Its sad, but I'm still having some trust issues with her. She said that my brother really wants to see me. God, I miss him so much. But I still don't know. We will have to just see how things go from here.