A piece of the puzzle.

My family is small. Really small. It's just myself, and my Mum & Dad. Both my parents are only children, and three of my four grandparents died before I was born. The only living grandparent - my mother's mother - lives a bitter existence in Florida.

Her name is Minerva, she's 86, and we haven't spoken in almost 2 years. I have 2nd or 3rd cousins, that went onto live prosperous, wealthy lives. Apparently, I have a handful of cousins that are doctors & lawyers (per norm), and one that supposedly models for Chanel. Minerva has/had 8 brothers and sisters, who pushed their children to succeed, be captains of industry, have stable families.

She used to tell my Mum, that we're a dysfunctional family because my parents had huge arguments that sometimes resulted in my mother getting a hotel room for the night, and they couldn't control me. She thought my illness could be turned off, if I tried hard enough. Truth is, she abhores anything related to mental illness, and she continues to deny she had any part in depression running in my family.

I've tried to figure out where her intollerance of mental illness stems from, and I think might have figured out a big piece of the puzzle. Their was once a psychiatric hospital in Northeast Philadelphia, called Byberry Hospital. It was for the mentally unstable, and it was exactly what one thinks of when they think "mental institution." Horrible conditions, mistreatment of patients, etc. It was shut down in 1990, and the remaining paitients were transferred to one of the State-run hosiptals. Later in life, I'd work with several of these tranplants, at a nursing home, and their stories were so farfetched, they had to be true. It's a huge, looming property with underground tunnels connecting buildings, that became a refuge for the homeless and the drug addicted. People had websites, offering secret tours - if you were caught, you'd be arrested for trespassing. Growing up, I was told Minvera had 7 brothers & sisters. A great aunt of mine informed me, they had an eigth sibling - a sister. I was told she was admitted to Byberry when she was eight, and lived there until her death at 15. My grandmother refused to speak of her, and I don't even know her name. This was news to even my mother.

Her first husband, Sam died of a heart attack when my mother was 18. Story goes, he doted on my mother, and my grandmother resented it. She was very neglectful of my mother. She remarried two more times - putting another husband in the ground, and another in the poor house. She has a boyfriend, going on 12 years now. He doens't like me either.

She was constantly on me about my weight, my grades, and my asparations. I egged her on, to the point of her needing to rely on Valium just to be in the same room with me. As I became older, and life finally started to come together, we started up a great, mature relationship.

Some of you know, my first time living in New York, wasn't on the Upper East Side. I tried out Tribeca from August to October of '05. Although I was interviewing 3 times a day, practically every day, I couldn't get a job that paid well enough for me to make rent. I called my Grandmother crying, asking for rent money ($1500). She refused to give it to me, because she wanted to teach me a lesson. Because of that "lesson", I had to move back into my parents 1 bedroom apartment, slept on the couch for 4 months, and communted to New York 3 days a week, interviewing. I haven't spoken to Minerva since then. I was her God damned Granddaughter - her only grandchild.

She would send me $50 on my birthday, and Hannukah. And she called me on Yom Kippur, because her endocrinologist said she should try and make peace with me. I hung up on her. Since then, the money has stopped, as have the calls. She asks about me, when she talks with my mother, but my mother is very vague on my life, just as I requested she be.

So, why bring all of this up? Well, it seems I'm traveling with a family to Boca Raton next month - and we'll be stayinh withing 5 miles of Minerva. I have absolutely no desire to reconcile or even acknowlege her. My Mum says she has Parkinson's, and my only periodic question pertaining to her is, "How advanced is it?"