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[w_a_i_d]

Just helped my mother draft a letter to the brother she's not seen in a quarter of a century. I suppose it is somewhat normal when someone dies for the survivors' lives to turn into a goddamn soap opera, but I could live without a lot of it, I must say.

Granny wrote him a "YOU ARE NO LONGER MY SON" letter twenty-five years ago...

DOOF!

No one has

Comments

[w_a_i_d]

Hahaha, your icon. Yes.

I didn't even know about the "NO SON OF MINE" letter until yesterday. Until then I thought the rejection was all on his side. As far as I can now tell, what happened probably included the following incidents, but God knows exactly how it really played out:

My uncle (adopted) was my grandmother's favourite. She adored him. My grandfather, on the other hand, had never really bonded with him. He knew this was wrong and felt guilty about it, but that didn't change anything. As a man in his 20s/30s, my uncle appeared to my mother to have deliberately distanced himself from the family. Then my grandmother got cancer, and it spread, and she should have been dying. (In fact, to everyone's bewilderment, she hung on for another 20 years, but of course no one knew that would happen at the time). Already feeling that her adored son was neglecting her, she told him how ill she was, and his reaction gave her the impression he didn't care. She was profoundly hurt, and some time after that, she wrote him the letter (

[snarryfool]

Happy families! Both my parents divorced their first spouses, but it was a Big Secret, and my father went to his grave not knowing that I know that I have a half-sister somewhere out there (about whom I know nothing but her name). In the branch of my mother's family that stayed in Poland after WWII, there was an uncle who with his wife adopted a young war orphan, who supposedly was never told she was adopted. Given the timing and the secrecy, I've often wondered whether that child's family might not have been murdered in the Holocaust. Oh, there's just oodles of things we're not supposed to talk about or know or suspect.

Personally, I endorse hanging around and seeing what develops, if only because then in a few decades when everybody's dead you won't be left wondering. Or at least, you'll be wondering about different things.

[w_a_i_d]

Aieee, that's complicated, yes

[snarryfool]

Oh, I can definitely appreciate the desire-shading-into-need to escape

[sabrinaphynn]

Do what you need to do to remain sane, luv

[enname]

Everytime I go to complain of my family being so utterly boring ... I shall bear this in mind and remind myself that really? Boring is quite nice. The senior great grandmothers and great, great grandmothers (On both sides) managed to do a lot of hard core suppressing of 'things' that are now lost to time. They must have been quite frightening for such outrageous success. Everyone else just merrily lost their minds before much damage could happen.

It does rather sound like it is going to go on for some time and well, in truth they are supposedly meant to be all adults. Perhaps seeking a little sanity and reminding yourself that not every single thing is a DRAMA could do no harm.