Grandparents are people, too

It’s the holiday season. That means relatives — and lots of them.

For some this is a dream, but for others, it’s deadly.

Too much time spent around your racist great uncle and your homophobic great aunt can be harmful.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a bigoted night.

The holidays can be a huge stab to the ego with all the old folk cramping your style.

But here’s the thing — if you want the old folk to be open and accepting of you and your choices, show them some respect and do the same for them.

This column is coming with some family dirty laundry that I’m choosing to air with no better audience than all of you.

My grandma died in winter 2008, so this Christmas will officially mark the fifth Christmas she won’t be there. There were and continue to be some rough times because of her absence. The way she went only made things harder.

About six months ago my grandpa got himself a lady friend, and it was the shot heard ’round the family.

To this day I can’t go one family gathering without someone whispering, “So what do you think about that one?” with a nice “Mean Girls” point over to the lady friend.

It’s fine to be a little bitter, but then it’s time to get over it.

I’ve heard the same thing happen in other families with divorce and remarriage.

Suddenly, the older family member is ostracized because she or he doesn’t seem to be fitting into the moral standards we set for our elders.

For some reason we see the older generation as not having the same human feelings we have. We think that they’re forever stuck in their age and situation. It’s like our older relatives hit 70 and are stuck in some sort of museum exhibit.

We call them “grandpa” or “grandma” and automatically put them in this weird asexual, subhuman category.

That just isn’t the case.

So for all of you who struggle with your relationships with your older family, just look at them as people, not octogenarians. They went through and continue to go through the same struggles and feelings we go through on a daily basis.

I’m not saying you should go home during the holidays and ask your grandparents about their sex life, but I am saying you should feel free to break the boundaries and show them you acknowledge them as real people, not wax figures in a preserved state.

It might be weird to take them off that pedestal, but they’re still pretty great people.

You’re just at an age where you can change the moral standards slightly, knowing what real life can bring.

When you get old, you’ll want to live every last moment, too.

­— sjostrow@indiana.edu
Follow columnist Sam Ostrowski on Twitter @ostrowski_s_j.