Joey
Today has so far unfolded with a fair few emotional discoveries - quite deep parts of the story which contort and confuse my previous understandings of the story. Little bits (and quite substantial bits) of information keep coming to light that make my fantasy feel stupid, possibly even offensive. I feel like i should have realised earlier on in my life how shallow it was - completely lacking in detail.
We started to talk about music today, about the musical tastes of Joey, my Mum and my Gran. I have started to compile a playlist of relevant music, starting out by adding Sam Cooke - one of my Gran's favourites. This lead to my Mum pulling out her old singles record collection, the majority had been sent to her by Joey. Music had been one of their main ways of bonding, even despite the ocean between them. They shared a love of lyrics. My Mum asked me to play a couple of the ones she picked out.
The first track was Mike Douglas' 'The men in my little girl's life'. The song is a spoken narrative of a Father speaking about his daughter as she grows up. Each verse is a different episode in time where she asks her Father's permission to spend time with a boy outside the house. At first she asks permission to play in the back garden with a boy from down the road. Next it's to walk her to school, then to take her to the prom. Finally it's to get married (i skipped a few stages). The upsetting part about this song is that unlike the Father in the song, Joey wasn't there for my Mum to ask his permission.
Next, Anne Murray's 'Broken Hearted'. My Mum told me about how Joey had written a label on this record saying 'played 1,000,000,000 times'. He had told her about how he listened to this whilst thinking of my Gran - regretting his choices and wishing he could change how things played out. The song itself is about wanting someone back, about regretting your actions. At this point, my Gran came into the conservatory and sat down on the end of the sofa. She remained there, still, staring out through the rain soaked double-glazing. Kathi, my Mum, leant over and showed Grace, my Gran, the record - pointing out the label. Grace replied with 'don't you think i have too?.
I don't think she ever fell out of love with Joey.
Before i abandoned the interview yesterday due to bad sound recording, she was telling me how hard it is to be bringing this all back up. This made me worry if i was exploiting her - and i think i would potentially be if i wasn't family. Because i am though, i feel that because i'm so emotionally invested in this story also, i think it is fair to probe into what my Grandfather was actually like. She made excuses for his behaviour - masking big sections of their lives together by saying 'that was a bad time of my life' but forgiving him with statements like 'but he was very young'.
I found out that he hadn't been as excited as he could have been about finding out my Gran was pregnant. He wasn't ready to accept the responsibilities that went along with this and wanted to continue on his teenage adventure. I also found out that he had an accident at work - a shard of metal had flown into his eye, hospitalising and blinding him for three weeks. When he was discharged the first thing he did was grab their new car and make a round of Boston's bars. This was the beginning of his problem with drink. This behaviour carried on and this was the period where he met Jane, the woman my Gran later found him cheating on her with.
Later on though, Grace sat down with me for a chat about him and his background. My details on this are a little vague as my head was elsewhere with work stress, but essentially he didn't have a great childhood; despite being born into a wealthy family. I know that this is never an excuse for bad behaviour, but it is a reason i guess. I need to go a bit deeper into this though and find out full details.
All of this is leading to a much more complex understanding of my Grandfather. My mum showed me photos of him posing with guns. This isn't something i approve of, or had thought he would have subscribed to - but i can't blame him as guns are a big part of American culture.
In a way, i'm upset and disappointed that my fantasy was so far from the reality. But then again, it's reassuring to know he was human.