I've
been thinking about my family. Thinking about my brother-in-law's illness
has activated all sorts of old issues around the deaths of friends and
family in the last five years, and all of the fall out from those events.
There has been so much loss, and it's not just the loss of the dead.
My best
friend's husband, who was also our close friend, died of cancer about
6 years ago. I lost my best friend at some level then, too, because
when her husband died of cancer, she fell into her own despair, and
still is not fully whole again. I was a major source of her support
through almost all of that.
My mother
died suddenly, after surgery, just three months after my friend's husband
died. I had only just begun to re-establish a relationship with her
after two years of her having rejected me for crazy, paranoid reasons.
One of which was as she stated that I ..."told her how to keep her iced
tea from being cloudy, therefore I interfered"...crazy, eh? Another
was what she referred to as being annoyed by my husband's constant "smirk."
There was lots unresolved about that relationship don't you think? And
things could never be resolved once she died.
A friend
who is a therapist told me that that sort of relationship makes for
what is called a complicated bereavement. And she's right. No matter
how I like to tell myself I've coped with it, there are still levels
which elude me and return to haunt me. There may be no "ghosts" per
se, but believe me, there are ghosts of relationship issues which, if
they remain unresolved, will come back to haunt you, and bite you in
the butt when you are least aware, just like the craziness that bit
you in the butt when the people were living.
In April
of '97 I lost my favorite brother,
the one I was close to and with whom I had many things in common. At
that time, I also I lost the relationsip, lousy as it was, with my other
living brother due to his own personal unresolved issues, his sibling
rivalry issues and his stubbornness. I feel that relationship will never
be repaired. I am likely better off not to have to deal with him, but
he is my brother, and the loss is not something one can dismiss with
ease. It does make me sad, and again leaves unresolved issues for me
as well.
So each
death has also brought the loss of, or a major change to a living relationship.
I cannot anticipate what losses other deaths might bring, but I am a
little concerned.
I also
realized recently that because of all of these family losses, I have
almost no close family left. The only person who shares my history from
birth is my father really, and he is 80 years old. He is extremely healthy
and his mother lived to be 98 or 99, so he could be around for a long
time yet. But, when he is gone, there will be no one else who shares
my early history. We were not a family who did the "relative" thing
with any degree of commitment or regularity, so I don't have any extended
family to rely on either. There is something very, very lonely about
the feeling that I will really truly be the only one left here who knows
my entire history.
There's
something about family connections that are so important. So many important
connections of mine have been broken and I need very badly to make new
connections somewhere, and I am not finding a way or a place to do that
with friends or relatives. Instead, I just see more brokenness coming.