My Mother's immediate blood line now only goes down to her kids. Her brother passed away in November, and her father passed away Thursday night. She has lots of cousins, but she is the last one of the immediate family in which she grew up. It is difficult to explain, or even figure out, how I feel about this. It is a
surprisingly complicated situation. The woman who previously I referred to as his girlfriend became his wife. Ironically, at the end of a post venting about the situation, I finished with "
I seriously feel like I just lost my grandfather." This is some random rambling about the whole family thing as I try to do a million things and squeeze in my grandfather's funeral.
My Mom's brother was one of a few alcoholics in that generation of cousins. As far as I remember or know, my uncle was the one who was never a recovering alcoholic for very long. He was arrested a long time ago, I think because he was drunk and disorderly and then pulled a knife on the cop who was handling the situation. Then he skipped bail, headed to the West Coast, and never came back East.
My brother lived in the same city where our uncle was, but I think my Mom did not want our uncle knowing my brother lived there and then showing up on my brother's door step. If he ever started AA, he never got to the apologizing step, and my Mom did not have the emotional stores to reach out or make amends of any sort. I think she held on to bitterness that he was the prodigal son type. Their parents sent him money. Stored his stuff. Always wanted to him to come back. They never seemed to show the same caring towards her in her eyes. A recent sermon by the pastor at my church gave me great perspective on the prodigal son story, and I shared it (and a link to the service so she could hear the sermon) with my Mom. The take home message: The prodigal son story is one of mercy. Her parents loved her just as much, but even though her brother was delinquent, that does not erase the joy they would have had at his homecoming. I think the important realization I hope she can get to is that their actions were not committed to hurt her, but purely an aspect of their relationship with their lost son. Now he is gone, and we know he had a woman in his life. I know my mother will look into his passing to know that he was not alone and to know why he died.
She was sad about her brother passing, although they only communicated every several-several years. At Christmas I told her that it makes perfect sense that she would be sad - She no longer had that feeling of her brother being out there. Maybe she always hoped they could have some heart-to-heart about how he left her to deal with their aging parents. Or how much she hurt that she felt in their parents eyes he could do no wrong and she could do no right. I don't know.
A week ago, my Mom found out that her father was on comfort care only, so it was only a matter of days before he passed. She and my Dad had HORRIBLE colds, or she maybe would have thought about considering to try to maybe visit him. Because my sister will be taking a vacation, she had decided to visit him assuming she would be out of the country for his funeral. Then we found out he had passed. This comes at a time when I have a trip planned starting Friday, my sister and her family have a trip to Spain starting Thursday, and my brother and his wife live across the country and JUST went back to my parents two weeks ago. As my Mom said, "Work, time, money, and plans all work against us, don't they?"
In reality, I do not feel any of us 'owed' him a visit. We grandkids tried a few times to keep in contact with him, even when my mother had enough (but before he brought legal proceedings against her). Yet I would regret
it if I did not have any closing contact, be it a visit even if he was
not conscious or his funeral. I think we lost the man we knew about 3
years ago, but at least I never mourned that loss. In fact, after the post I linked to above (or maybe it was before I got that letter), I visited him, had lunch with he and the woman, and when it was just he and I he brought up my mother mis-managing his money. I did not hesitate to challenge him on this and tell him it was his responsibility to speak with my mother about this. When I left, I went to my grandmother's grave and asked her how she could let him do this to the family. Why was she not coming to him in his dreams or something. My Mom also found out (thanks to it being a small town and her cousins being there) that when he made friends at a care home, his "caring wife" moved him to a new one. To us it was clear that she was isolating him and trying to get as much of his money as possible, and he thought she loved him. My mother made an anonymous report to the state for elderly abuse (she was no longer communicating with him and did not want her name associated with it); she later found out that a care giver where he was staying also filed a report.
Even though we all felt we had lost him already, it is still different now that he is gone. This morning at church, I had to stop myself from crying when I thought about leaving the church after his funeral and his casket being carried out. I have been trying to get a few experiments done in lab this weekend so that it would be easier to travel to his funeral. I was in lab until after 10 pm on a Saturday night and the two experiments I did did not work. Then I tried to call CF to *finally* *officially* confirm that we are no longer in a relationship (long story for a different post), and he did not answer. So I cried on the way home and then went to bed immediately.
I have played over in my head how to interact with my grandfather's
"wife", if necessary, in order to make it clear that I really do not
care about her and she is not our family, without being a total bitch. At the visiting hours, will we make our own little circle in the back? Will my Mom *really* want to stand with the woman and greet people? On the other hand I look forward to seeing the extended family. My Mom was the little blond cousin growing up, or at least that is how I always pictured it when I see she and her grown male cousins together. I love that they act like big brothers, harassing her over the years and more recently giving her updates on her father when it was important. I know they will give her big hugs and make her laugh.
Who knows. Thoughts, prayers, strength, or suggestions on how to be rude politely are all welcome.
