The "If" Project - November 2001
By: Jaime Ertel

If you were given one cosmic 'get out of jail free' card that would allow you to undo one act from your past, which would you use it on? What outcome would you hope to result from that decision?

This entry is dedicated to my grandmother, Dorothy Lillian Engler
1918 - 1995

1940's?	1940's?	1937	1940's?

If I could undo one thing from my past, I would go back to my teenage years and spend as much time as I possibly could with my grandmother during the last few years of her life.

My gramma was my first best friend. As soon as I was old enough, I memorized her phone number. I called her almost every single day, dragging a kitchen chair over to the wall so I was tall enough to reach the telephone. I always wanted to sleep over at gramma's house. We were the two "nights owls" in the family, and gramma always let me stay up late. I have so many wonderful childhood memories of her. There was never a dull moment; we were always squeezed into her little armchair side-by-side: coloring, playing board games, drawing letters on each other backs, singing, watching game shows, and planning our secret adventure, where we would jump into a convertible and head to California. Even when I had the chicken pox, I tried hiding them from my mom so I could still visit gramma for the weekend.

My gramma and I wrote each other "love notes." I thought she was the best artist & poet in the world. I am so grateful that my mom saved all of these notes, and now I can keep them with me forever.

When I became a teenager, my relationship with my gramma weakened. I spent my teenage years fretting over boyfriends, parties, and homework. Instead of calling my gramma every day, I was calling boys and fussing over my hair. Family get-togethers became a drag and I did everything I could to avoid them. Even though my gramma was a lot of fun, I wanted to be with my friends, not my family. One time my gramma nonchalantly put her high heel on the end of her cane and whipped it at my mother's head. She was always making funny faces, telling us corny jokes, and keeping us laughing. Sometimes she even embarrassed me, by asking my boyfriends if they had "seen my boobies" or by picking up another extension of the phone and singing while I was talking to one of my friends. I always laughed at her little pranks... but my mind always seemed to be elsewhere.

Absorbed in my ridiculous adolescent drama, I was barely paying attention to the decline in my gramma's health. My gramma was a chain-smoker, and had been her whole life. Even after the doctor ordered her to quit, she continued shoplifting cigarettes and stashing them around her house. She was stubborn as an ox, and even if she filled the whole bathroom up with smoke, she would still lie and say she hadn't been smoking. My gramma died from Emphysema in 1995. Even months after she died, my grandpa and mother were still finding her cigarettes hidden around the house. Cigarette addiction killed my gramma... killed my first best friend.

When my mom called me and told me Gramma had died, I was in the middle of some teenage crisis or another. My brain was a cloud of over-dramatic fog. I was only half-listening to my mom on the phone. I replied something calmly, like, "She isn't in pain, now. She went to a better place."

It wasn't until many months later that I finally cried over the loss of my gramma, and realized what a horrible mistake I had made. I tried convincing myself that she had just died at a bad point in time. She died at what was probably the most immature peak of my life. But I know that's just a really poor excuse. If I had one 'Get Out Of Jail Free' card, if I could go back knowing what I know now, I would spend as much time as I possibly could with my gramma. I would have her tell me stories about her life, about her childhood, about her parents, about her marriages, about her beliefs. I would have gotten to know her as closely as possible. The only things I really knew about her, I learned from my mom. My relationship with Gramma never progressed much past my own childhood, so my memories of her are mostly of playing games and joking around. If only I could just go back with a more mature attitude, talk to her intelligently, and learn from her stories...

I just hope Gramma knew how much she always meant to me. I wish so badly she were still alive today, now that I am grown up. I know I could have learned a lot more from her; I think I missed out on a lot of amazing things. I wish she could know the Jaime I am today. I think she'd still be one of my best friends in the world. I think she'd really like my boyfriend, Jay. She always wanted me to meet a nice boy. And I think she might really be proud of who I've become.