Last week, I visited my great-grandmother in hospice the night before she died. Her death came as no surprise and was made as comfortable as possible. She lived a very long and fulfilling life. She was a devout Christian who cared deeply about others. This was true even in her final moments, as she told my mom to check in on “Aunt Lillian.” Lillian was not my Granny’s aunt, nor was she someone who needed to be checked in on. Lillian was her mother, who had long since passed. Lying on her deathbed, trying desperately to make sense of a world that was ready to move on from her, she was looking out for someone she thought needed help.
She was a leader in her church, where she organized trips for the older members of her congregation. She took care of me when I was sick, preparing meals that had levels of sugar unsafe for human consumption. She and my Papa helped raise my mom, serving as a point of consistency and comfort in a battlefield of uncertainty. During my formative years, she was the perfect image of a good person.
What I didn’t know at the time was that she was also a deeply bigoted person. When my uncle married a Black woman, my Granny made it clear that his wife was not welcome in her home. When my mom came out to the rest of our family, she left Granny out. She didn’t need to have that conversation to know how it would go. As I got older and learned some of these darker truths, it created a rift between the image in my mind and reality. I created distance. I only saw her once a year, at Christmas, when the family would converge at her house.
It felt like the right thing to do. I don’t want to be around racist and homophobic people, regardless of my familial relation to them. I was an exemplar of moral consistency. What I didn’t recognize was that her hate was being mirrored in me. As she got older and had death scares, each time I would think, “It’s about time.” I went from the sick little boy watching old movies on her couch to borderline wishing death upon her.
What had started as solidarity for marginalized communities had morphed into cruelty towards my own Granny. What was meant to be radical empathy, I realized, had become incredibly selective.
While I was home for break, my mom got a call from her dad. It was an unfortunately familiar call: Granny was about to die. This had happened before, but she always managed to pull through. This time was different; I’ll spare the details, but it was more definite. She would probably make it through that night, but not much longer after that. So we went to see her.
As I stood over her hospital bed, I no longer saw a woman full of hate and prejudice. I saw a woman who had experienced more trauma than I can fully comprehend. Someone who was born into extreme poverty in the South during the Great Depression. Someone who was told by politicians that her problems stemmed from people of color, immigrants, radical communists, and the “gay agenda.” Someone who never had access to the education that could show her otherwise. I saw true vulnerability.
As I walked out of her room, I felt like some of the darkness that had grown in me had been washed away. This is probably not a common feeling for people after knowingly seeing their relative alive for the last time. I stood in that hallway with my mom and my two sisters as we held each other and wept, each of us for different reasons. I felt remorse for the years I had spent hating someone rather than trying to help them.
Feeling frustration and anger after witnessing bigotry, especially when it’s coming from someone you love, is a normal response. It can even be a valuable response. Anger and frustration are powerful drivers for change, but not when they are directed at the people around us. Our anger needs to be directed at the systems that take advantage of people like my Granny. Use your anger wisely and don’t allow the hatred of others to become your own.