Grandma's Crucifix

This is a story I’ve been working on fleshing out in writing since it happened. I thought it would be appropriate to finish it for the one year anniversary of the incident that inspired the concept for this chapter. Still trying to come up with a snappy subtitle; I know there’s a perfect one out there. Chapter begins below.

If I had to estimate a number, I’d guess that I think about my Grandma’s crucifix approximately 2-3 times per week. I lost it in West Hollywood during Pride exactly a year ago. Something had told me not to bring it with me—my intuition. I ignored it, just as I’d ignored it so many other times. See, I use it like a good luck charm or protection charm. “Used,” I should say. Past tense. The crucifix was from her condo, so I believed it had her energy. When I had the rational thought that I shouldn’t bring it that day, because I’d be drinking, my irrational voice aggressively countered that something bad would definitely happen if I didn’t bring it. 

A compilation of potential horrors that could befall me if I didn’t bring it with me filled my mind: a car accident on the way there or back, being mugged and having my wedding ring, my grandmas wedding ring, and my mom’s wedding ring all stolen (I wear them all), getting shot at by a mass shooter who hates gays and decided to shoot up gay bars in West Hollywood during Pride. The images from the Pulse shooting that my friend who is a medical examiner at the morgue in Orange County had told me about. I saw it all in under a second of 3D time. Quickly, I tucked the crucifix into the inside pocket of my red Coach bag. 

It was the worst feeling in my chest, stomach, and shoulders when I realized I’d lost it. The dread and anxiety made me feel ill, just like when I lost her silver bracelet. My mean voice started in: “You lost the last thing you had of hers/You’re such a loser/What a piece of shit/You actually lost her crucifix you fucking idiot/You’re a fuckup who doesn’t know how to drink responsibly/ You think you’re recovered and you’re not/You are so embarrassing/Your Grandma is ashamed of you/ and on and on. 

God, it was the bracelet all over again. Imagery of the bracelet on her wrist and the memory of realizing I’d lost it flashed rapidly in my brain. I had tried so hard not to be upset. Dad was dying and I didn’t want to seem concerned about a bracelet. For weeks I held out hope that someone would turn it in at a lost and found. Because it was so small, I told myself, anyone who found it would think it belonged to a child. I don’t know why I thought this would make someone more likely to turn it in, but I did. I was wrong. It was a gorgeous, one of a kind silver bracelet that she had custom made for herself based on her own design, by her jeweler. His name was Ruby. Probably a nickname. I don’t know if I’ll ever truly get over losing that bracelet. One day when I can afford to, I’ll have a jeweler make a replica of it using the photographs I have of it on both of our wrists. One day. Ungiorno. 

The bracelet, I realized it was gone as soon as I left the airport. With the crucifix, I didn’t realize I’d lost it until late the next afternoon. This was due to having been blackout drunk the night before in WeHo, which in turn caused me to be embarrassingly hung over the next day. When it wasn’t in the first place I looked (where I had put it when I left the apartment), I knew it was gone forever. But I kept frantically looking in places I knew it wasn’t, because I didn’t know what else to do. I emptied the bag I had used, I emptied all pockets, my husband’s pockets, checked our stairwell, the front of the building where the Uber dropped us off. The beginnings of a panic attack reverberated through my nervous system. “NO!” I yelled to myself. “You’re not having a panic attack. You’re going to calm the fuck down, contact every bar you were at, call Matt, contact Uber, and you’re going to find Grandma’s crucifix.” 

I called every bar we went to asking them to check their Lost and Founds for a “medium sized wooden crucifix with metal Jesus.” Actually, I’ll admit I was a little embarrassed to be calling all these gay bars looking for a crucifix. I kept prefacing my inquiry with “I’m sorry, I know this is going to sound strange, but I lost something that had sentimental value to me…” The employee who answered at The Abbey laughed when I described the item, and I heard them yell to someone “got a girl looking for a lost Jesus thing!” But the person who answered at Beaches was extremely kind. I think he may have been one of the owners who I’d met once before, because I recognized his voice. He said, “you don’t have to apologize, that’s not strange at all. I’m going to look everywhere for you and call you back—if it’s here, I’ll find it.” 

::Arrested Development Narrator Voice:: It was not there, and was never found. 

I briefly entertained the idea of putting up “LOST CRUCIFIX—$50 REWARD” posters all over the Gayborhood, but talked myself out of it. By this time, I’d heard from Matt and Rich some of the humiliating details of my behavior while shit-faced the night I lost the crucifix. I ultimately decided not to go back to the scene of the crime, taping up lost posters for a religious item with my name and contact information. At first, I was pretty fucking upset with myself for losing it. I didn’t want Rich to see, but I severely lost my cool about it when I was finally alone. The basic themes of my inner voices were that I’d lost the only thing I had with her energy on it, and what a fuckup I was for being so irresponsible and stupid. 

For the first time in a long time since I’ve been “in recovery,” I wanted to harm myself. Just as I had felt it growing up whenever I was disappointed in myself, the desire to punish myself to make the pain physical instead of emotional nearly overwhelmed me. Thankfully, one of the benefits of being in therapy for 15+ years is that I’ve gotten much better at talking myself down from destructive or unhelpful thoughts. Please notice I said I’ve gotten much better, and not that I’ve mastered it. If I’d mastered it, I would’ve stopped myself from getting blackout drunk in the first place.

One of the most successful strategies for me in avoiding a complete depressive spiral or relapse in self-harm is to imagine that either my Grandma or Dad is in the room with me, and how sad it would make them to see me harm myself or induce an “episode.” Then I think about how proud they would be of me if I were able to control my thoughts, redirect them, and not cause an episode or experience a relapse. 

As I was starting to resume normal breathing after bringing my heart rate down with breath-work and positive self-talk, I had a vision. I could hear my Grandma in my mind and see her sitting in her chair in the kitchen at her desk, in front of the window. She was waving her hand dismissively at the crucifix while holding a cigarette between her index and middle finger, saying, “all that over that old piece of junk, Lauren?” 

I burst out laughing, grateful to her for lightening the mood. “I needed that laugh, Grandma” I said. Then, I was transported back in time through my memories, to the day the crucifix had been stuck behind the thermostat. It had been a piece of something else, maybe an Easter display. The display had broken, something was wrong with it, and my Mom was collecting the whole from a table and bringing it into the kitchen to throw in the trash. When she got to the cabinet under the sink where the trash was, my Grandma left up from her seat, walked straight over to the crucifix, and snapped it off the rest of the display. 

“And what in the hell are you going to do with that?,” my Mom asked her. Grandma looked around the room until her eyes landed on the thermostat. She walked over to it and stuck the bottom of the crucifix into a small crack between the back of the thermostat and the wall, where it fit perfectly without falling. My Mom asked her why she did that, and she said “it doesn’t feel right throwing a crucifix in the trash.” It would stay there for the next 20-something years, in that exact same spot. Over time, the crucifix accumulated some friends. Around the time my Grandma stopped going to church on the big holidays because it was too crowded for her, every family member started bringing her things they’d had blessed for her by Father Tony. 

I wish I could say “every family member except me,” but I did it too. It was mainly palm leaves that we’d woven into little crosses. My Aunt Florence could weave these incredible patterns with the palm leaves, so could a few of my cousins. I sucked, and could only do the most basic cross shape. But guess whose palm crosses got stuck up on the thermostat next to the crucifix? That’s right, mine. Grandma displayed my ugly ass little palm crosses with pride, tossing the intricately complex ones from everyone else. 

My Mom and I cleared out her condo when Grandma was put in Purgatory. I was having a hard time with the reality of the situation, but doing my best to appear calm and collected. Everyone kept saying this was what was best for everyone, but I didn’t feel like it was what was best for Grandma. It felt like it was what was convenient and best for everyone BUT my Grandma. But I had no power in the situation, no power at all, and I hated it. “If I had money, I’d have a say” I would think to myself. But I was still in law school, racking up unfathomable amounts of student loan debt. 

I didn’t want to have an “episode” or meltdown, I wanted to be strong in front of my Mom. Usually the best way for me to appear calm during something stressful is to disassociate until it’s over, but I also wanted to be present. I was having all these thoughts about it being “the last time” I’d ever be in her kitchen, be standing in her hallway, look at myself in her mirror, etc. As I walked by the thermostat, on the way out for “the last time,” all the crosses she had stuck leaning in the crack between it and the wall caught my attention. “What should we do with all these crosses?” I asked my Mom.“Can you believe she kept all those dingy crosses all this time? I think it’s time to finally throw them out,” my Mom replied. 

“I guess so…” I picked up the wooden one with the metal Jesus. “Except this one, I’ll take this one.” “What, you’re suddenly religious again?” my Mom asked incredulously. “No. I just think Grandma was right about not throwing a crucifix out, it doesn’t feel right.” With a roll of her eyes and a scoff, my Mom said “suit yourself,” and that’s how I ended up with the damn thing. It wasn’t some treasured heirloom, or something that my Grandma had given me on her deathbed! It was literally a broken piece of crap that she stuck behind the thermostat for over two decades, so as not to throw a metal Jesus in the trash with eggshells and food scraps. 

There she was sitting in her kitchen chair again, laughing at me, with a cup of coffee and a cigarette. “Honestly Lauren, who cares? Forget about it!” I realized I was attaching all this deep meaning to this stupid crucifix, which had meant nothing at all to my Grandma. I was about to give myself a panic attack over losing that piece of junk! My Grandma would never have dreamed that one day in my 30s, after she was gone, a wooden crucifix she snapped off the top of a broken Easter display, would somehow be a source of emotional distress for me. 

It was pretty hilarious, and now I couldn’t stop laughing. The more I laughed, I could feel her laughing with me. Not with me, within me. It was like we were laughing together in her kitchen. The intense anxiety and shame I had been feeling was the result of attaching it to the bracelet, and reliving the same feelings over the crucifix that I had over the bracelet, which in turn reminded me of all of my failures. That’s a sort of glitch I have in my neural pathways, anxiety about anything can quickly escalate to anxiety about everything. Harder and harder I laughed at the absurdity of it all—that I had almost had a full blown relapse in everything over that stupid crucifix! Then, another vision. 

This time it was of the dance floor at The Abbey. I know that’s where the crucifix fell out of my bag, because I fell down multiple times there while attempting to “dance.” I could see it on the floor, sticky with alcohol. A skinny white guy with bleach blonde hair and no shirt dancing over it, almost stepping on it several times. Then a dark haired white guy in a black leather vest who worked there, the one who answered the phone when I called. The scene shifted from the dance floor at The Abbey to an apartment, dimly lit, tinted red from a colored bulb in a lamp. In that moment, I knew with 100% certainty that the crucifix had been ironically shoved up someone’s asshole. 

Now, I ponder the humor and the lesson of my Grandma’s crucifix regularly. I believed that an inanimate object had my Grandma’s “energy” because it was in her home, and irrationally believed I had “lost” a piece of her when I lost it. In reality, I am a part of her. If her “energy” is anywhere on this Earth, it’s inside of the people who knew her best and loved her most. It’s inside of me, and can’t be lost in anything material. The idea that she could have imprinted anything of herself onto a physical object like a crucifix or bracelet that isn’t already imprinted in my DNA and on my consciousness, is preposterous.

To me, the lesson of my Grandma’s crucifix is that the greatest things our loved ones leave us is the piece of them inside of us. It was the piece of her inside me that came to me and made me laugh at myself, so that I could laugh at the crucifix undoubtedly being used as a sex toy. I can hear my Grandma now, saying “Darling, after 20+ years on that thermostat, if anyone needed some excitement in their lives, it was that Jesus.”