Delayed Compassion

My grandmother wasn't a very nice person.
   I'm talking about my father's mother, who lived a block away from us when I was growing up. I spent my childhood enslaved to her and my grandfather, doing all sorts of manual labor for 25 cents an hour. She was a child of the Depression, one of the 'Feminine Mystique' generation, and generally sullen, resentful, and spiteful. Not to mention openly racist, but that wasn't her so much as the times she grew up in.
   After my grandfather died it fell to me to take care of her, which meant I just did the same thing I always did, mowed her lawn and cut limbs and weeded and all sorts of other things. She didn't drive, so she stayed by herself in her big house, waiting for visitors and emerging for graduations and holidays. It was kind of sad, actually, she'd been so mean and objectionable that she spent the last few years of her life mostly alone.
   It wasn't until just today that I realized how awful that time of her life must truly have been. Sure, she had the telephone, and she loved her San Antonio Spurs on TV, but she spent 99 percent of her time all by herself. No visitors, family only on special occasions, a visit from a Lutheran minister once every few months to take communion. I knew all this at the time - how could I not - but I was still so close to my decades-long servitude that it didn't matter to me.
   Now it makes me want to weep. No one should have to live like that, not even a bitter, hateful old woman who never did anything for anyone else. Time and distance have given me perspective and softened my own hard feelings.
   I feel sorry for her now, trapped that way, in a suburban prison largely of her own making. And it makes me realize the prison I'm building around myself, isolated, alone, becoming increasingly disconnected from people. I don't want to go out like that. I want a house filled with friends and family, I want people to drop by at all hours, I want to live my last days with noise and clamor and company, not bitter and alone, waiting for the end to come.
   Cross your fingers I'll get my wish.