Search for Family
My mother died when I was thirteen. This life changing event felt very surreal when it was happening. A mother dying was something that was whispered about and happened to a friend of a friend. I never imagined it would happen to me. In addition, my mother was not talked about much after her death, as if dying were something shameful or could be willed away by ignoring it. So needless to say, it has taken me many years to resolve my feelings about my mother and family. Somehow in my mind, my mother dying equated with family abandonment so I left the state where my family lived as soon as I came of age. I married young, had children, divorced after nineteen years. Then both my kids moved out of state so I still have no "family" near my home. My friends fill in, one lending me her mother upon occasion, another including me in his family gatherings for holidays and birthdays. My father became involved with another woman and her family and then died last year. Both my brother and sister live in other states, my brother near my son and my sister near my daughter. I have no close blood relative in the state I live in. Yet I recently realized that I have kept myself insulated from family by keeping my distance, literally, from blood relations. I can go to visit and I try to as much as possible. Yet inside me there is a wariness, a distrust, that if I let someone, especially a relative, get too close, they will leave me. It has been forty years since my mother died, yet this one event has resonated throughout my life and I struggle with the after-effects to this day. And I still yearn for close knit ties that will feel like home to me, a never-ending search for comfort for an unspeakable pain.