Family Matters

A few minutes ago my brother called to tell me his first wife has died after a lengthy illness.

They have been divorced for years and he has since re-married; nevertheless, the news upset him when Pam, one of his two daughters, e-mailed him about her mother’s death.

Coming right before Mother’s Day, their mother’s passing must be especially hard on the girls. And news of Charlotte’s death gave rise to mixed feeling in my brother.

Damn.

Sometimes I think there’s no good way to handle life situations.

My brother also informed me about the possibility of a family reunion in a couple of weeks. My heart dropped. I really don’t know how to handle that.

St. Paul said that so much as in you is to live at peace with all men.

To me, that means stay the hell away from them. But I doubt if that’s what Paul had in mind.

On one level, I want to be a loving man.

I really do.

But I find that contact with our huge extended family dredges up bitterness in my own heart because of long past, and probably thoughtless, cruelties and anguish these people put me through around the time of my own mother’s death.

During Mama’s final days, Ginny, our children and me faced eviction because our landlord had sold the apartment building we lived in. We had to locate and move to a new house the day after her funeral or we would face living in our car.

I spoke with each person in the extended family about help finding a job or renting one of the houses some of them owned. Without exception they turned me down.

At the same time I learned that some creep in that family had raped one of my daughters months previously and Ginny and I knew nothing about it till just before Mama’s funeral.

What a can of worms.

In all this, I felt as though those people had left us for dead beside the road.

The afternoon of Mama's funeral while the others were at the reception, through the intervention of my friend Congressman Charles Bennett, I found a house for us to move to the following day. And I did pay for Mama's funeral expenses myself without anything being contributed by other family members.

Tough times.

Yet, I tried to maintain a loving Christian spirit through it all.

Not very successful at it I’m afraid.

I could not feel loving. But to avoid feeling resentful, the only way I felt I could cope was to withdraw into myself.

I still feel that way.

Those people cut us off, and as far as I’m concerned, Ginny and the kids are my family.

The other relatives, I regard as just people, the same as I regard the folks in line at the grocery store. I mean them no ill, I’d help one when asked, I treat them with courtesy, but there’s no need to associate wit them on any other level.

Oddly enough over the years some have asked me to help ‘em move, start cars, etc. and I’ve always done that but I maintain my internal distance. In fact, Ginny helped one get her kids into a camp once; but we see no need to initiate voluntarily contact.

Hey, I know, that’s not Christian love, but it’s the best I can manage.

So when David mentioned a family reunion, my blood froze. My chest tightened. My stomach churned.

I cringed as though threatened with a beating.

I don’t want to get hurt anymore.

I hope their party turns out well, that the day is sunny, that they feast and dance and laugh and remember good times.

But leave me out of it.

I just can’t cope.

I’m enjoying my life and I hope they enjoy theirs.

I wish them well.

I also wish I’d never answered the phone.

I’m not going back over this to edit. I don’t have the heart.