Family. Tis a complicated subject for most people. And while I believe that friends count as family, what I'm talking about here is the brood you're born into. Some of us hit the jackpot and are born into all kinds of awesomeness. Some of us, not so much. BP used to like to defend her own family by saying I didn't understand the dysfunction behind it because my family is "perfect". They're far from that, few families are actually perfect, but I won't argue that I made out a lot better than she did in the family department, and I was never more thankful for that than after I saw what she went through on a daily basis with hers. I've trekked a long, sometimes complicated road with a lot of my family members. We were a very close group at one time, starting in childhood for my mom, aunts and uncles and continuing on until I was about 9-years-old. That year was a traumatic one for everybody as my grandma passed away late one evening after we all rushed down to the hospital. The accident took away a good amount of my childhood memories, but not the one of that night. It was all so surreal and unbelievable. After we found out she'd passed, my uncle asked the siblings and I if we wanted to see her and my brother opted to go in, but the sister and I said no. Neither of us wanted to see her in that way, we wanted to remember her as she was (though, in hindsight, had I known I wouldn't remember it anyway, I probably would've gone in).
Grandma's death started a chain of events that fractured the family for years, like a real life, Latino version of "Soul Food". It brought our prodigal son uncle out of the woodwork and he re-committed to being a part of the family after years being on his own and sparingly speaking to any of us, including his own mother. He was still a dick a lot of the time, but at least he seemed to take an interest in actually knowing his own family. Years later, this would come back to bite us when he had a falling out with all three of his kids (over politics, of all things), and later attempted to get money out of my mother. Perhaps the biggest thing that came with grandma's death was the loss of our house, which we were forced out of by the other side of the family. If not for the help of the decent side of the family, we would've been homeless and these other fuckers did not care in the slightest. And I've never understood that. How do you spend all of your life with people, love them, have BBQ's and then not give two fucks about kicking them out onto the street? And how do you do that to your own flesh and blood? The greed I understand, but that is some serious sociopathy going on there when you do it in the way they did. Our side stopped speaking to that side of the family after that, though there have been attempts by some of them to try and get back into our good graces. A couple of my cousins from that side have contacted me on Facebook, but I've never replied. We were kids when all this went down but I still wouldn't know what to say, and frankly, I have not missed their presence in my life. With age comes wisdom and my side of the family has realized that not everyone who exits our lives is a loss.
Despite being severed from the other side of the family, we've still had our fair share of issues. And a lot of them stem from the accident. Four years ago, a friend listened to me talk about specifics of the accident and offered up that my family sort of seemed to go MIA on me in the aftermath of it. I realized she was right, and it caused me to look at everything a little differently. I adore my family, but there are few of them I can go to when I need to talk about the loss I experienced during that time, or my own issues stemming from all of that. We're a loving, affectionate bunch but talking about the serious and emotional stuff is just not really an option. Sometimes I wish it was, especially when I hear about other people's families and how they can tell them ish whenever they need to. I wish I had that. But other times, I'm thankful I got the family that I did. We can't discuss everything but they're still good people. And when it comes down to it, I believe any of us would do anything for each other. I guess I should consider myself lucky to have that, rather than pining for something more.
