If You Eat On The Toilet, You're Feeding The Devil

The title of this post is something my grandmother used to say to me when I was a kid. Silly, right? She just passed away on New Year's Day and since then I've been hearing things she used to tell me in my head. I didn't have a wonderful realtionship with her because I never saw her. She was onery and mean, but she was my grandma. She suffered from an array of different illnesses, most of which would have killed a normal person within a year, but held on strong for many years. I saw her for the first time in about six years when my son and myself took a trip to Florida for Christmas to spend with my family. She struggled with dementia and altzheimers for a long time and it finally reached a breaking point and she couldn't remember anybody around her. She got to meet my son for the first time and I was so grateful for that. My other grandmother passed away before she got that opportunity. Her seeing my son was the happiest anybody had seen her in a really long time. She didn't really know who he was but she just loved her grandbabies. We got the call right after the ball dropped on New Year's Eve, which was my birthday. I sat around the whole day just waiting on the news to come that she had passed. My Aunt had phoned earlier that morning with news that the doctor said she wouldn't make it through the night. My grandma waited until it wasn't my birthay anymore before she passed and I was so grateful for that. Since then I've been thinking about when I was little and some of the things she said to me back then and I can't help but laugh. I wasn't more than four or five when I was eating a sandwich at her house and had to go to the bathroom. I didn't want to stop eating my food so I just continued eating it on the toilet and my grandmother comes running in there to grab my sandwich screaming IF YOU EAT ON THE TOILET YOU'RE FEEDING THE DEVIL! YOU DON'T WANT TO FEED THAT SON OF A BITCH! Point taken and since then I haven't consumed anything sitting on a toilet. I also remember her getting into epic battles with my grandpa because he would let me eat plain ice. She was so worried about my teeth falling out, not even to remember the fact that those teeth were going to fall out anyway. She would just cringe when she heard me chewing on ice. She would call me fat all the time, and by god on her deathbed she had a moment of clairity and she sure enough called me fat, and sadly, that was comforting because I knew she knew who I was. I feel bad that I didn't have much of a relationship with her, partly because of our family moving so much, and partly because of the jagged relationship she had with my own mother. But I am glad that she isn't in pain anymore. My mother's boyfriend told my mom in between her tears that today is the first day in a decade that my grandmother is not in pain. He's right and her passing was for the better to put an end to her long time suffering. I almost took my glass of water in the bathroom with my this morning just to see if I could hear her voice telling me not to feed the devil.