One more.
My mother's crazy cousin Diana died.
You know, a couple of years ago, I'd have felt worse about this than I do. I mean, I feel sorry for her son and all that, but I don't have any personal feelings about it one way or the other. After losing so many people I deeply cared for - as well as surviving the collateral fallout from those deaths - the loss of the woman who called my dad and me every year on Mom's yahrzeit to complain that we were at fault for her death leaves me completely unmoved.
When Dad lived here, we used to say we'd go visit her in the nursing home, a scant ten miles from Dallas, but somehow we never got there. And I never called or visited when Dad moved, either. It took me years and years to stop blaming myself for what happened in April, 1982, and I was in no hurry to relive any of it, especially with Diana saying it was because we were bad people or else why would something that bad have happened?
I'd stopped talking to her when I got Caller ID - one look at the name and I'd let the machine pick up. She wasn't persistent except last year when Dad died...and I just couldn't face her then.
Should I have called her? Probably. But given my precarious emotional state, I doubt that the outcome would've been too good.
What worries me now is that I can hear about something like that and not feel anything. It's like reading about the GNP of Monaco - I see it and don't digest it because it's not part of me in any way.
I'm not sure that's a good thing.
You know, a couple of years ago, I'd have felt worse about this than I do. I mean, I feel sorry for her son and all that, but I don't have any personal feelings about it one way or the other. After losing so many people I deeply cared for - as well as surviving the collateral fallout from those deaths - the loss of the woman who called my dad and me every year on Mom's yahrzeit to complain that we were at fault for her death leaves me completely unmoved.
When Dad lived here, we used to say we'd go visit her in the nursing home, a scant ten miles from Dallas, but somehow we never got there. And I never called or visited when Dad moved, either. It took me years and years to stop blaming myself for what happened in April, 1982, and I was in no hurry to relive any of it, especially with Diana saying it was because we were bad people or else why would something that bad have happened?
I'd stopped talking to her when I got Caller ID - one look at the name and I'd let the machine pick up. She wasn't persistent except last year when Dad died...and I just couldn't face her then.
Should I have called her? Probably. But given my precarious emotional state, I doubt that the outcome would've been too good.
What worries me now is that I can hear about something like that and not feel anything. It's like reading about the GNP of Monaco - I see it and don't digest it because it's not part of me in any way.
I'm not sure that's a good thing.