I was home last week for my father's funeral. And as friends have pointed out, most of my problems and venting when I came back hasn't been about the death of my father. It's been about my family while I was there.
My dad prepared me for his death from a young age. He hadn't expected to live a long, full life and wanted me to be unsurprised and emotionally, logistically, and psychologically prepared for his passing. For the most part, I was. It is still sad to lose him. He won't be there when I get married someday. But at the same time, some horrible part of me is relieved. We ended on as good a note in our relationship as I think we could've (painful, but speaking on fairly polite terms). As he got older and less present mentally, I had to accept that we remembered my life very differently.
The rest of my family, however, was grieving in their own ways... and I have apparently been gone too long, since I no longer have much of a tolerance for some of the crap I used to put up with on a daily basis. My mother's way of coping is to be controlling about every small, inconsequential thing to the point of making everyone else's lives miserable. From whether my nephews have eaten a meal recently enough to insisting on cooking food nobody wanted to eat before we all went out to a restaurant. And every ounce of it came with a burning hatred of the world, confidence that now when she controls the imaginary conversations with my father, that he is always on her side, and no tolerance for any other person's feelings or plans.
My sister's marriage has been on the rocks lately. Before dealing with my father's death, I'd spent weeks taking phone calls from my sister crying, falling apart, and wanting help/advice on how to handle the situation at hand. Her husband had an online girlfriend for months and hadn't thought it counted as cheating. She'd been angry at him for years, he'd been angry at her for years, and they had only stayed together for the children amid financial crisis, her returning to college, and moving across the country back to the tiny f*ing town we're from, where my family quickly put every piece of their lives to the test. While I was there, she had finally started therapy, but was basically medicated out of her mind because she was overwhelmed with suicidal idealization and hasn't been able to handle day-to-day life since she moved home.
My nephews are adorable, and only made life happier. :-)
My brother finally has a job he likes. He works part time in a gun shop, so his only conversations are about guns. He lives for free in my grandfather's old house about an hour away from the rest of the family. The thing is that my mother doesn't own the house completely, my aunt owns half of it and would like to sell. My mother should, realistically, just sell the house. Use the money from half of it to help my brother with his lack of ability to support himself for any length of time that way. Instead, my aunt is holding her tongue to try and appease her crazy sister over a house nobody grew up in. My brother has lived there for 4 months for FREE, including the cell phone bill he still can't remember to pay. But he CAN make big plans to buy some fancy gun he wants to custom build. The other catch to his residence is the stupid f*ing deal my mother made him. His last apartment was apparently the most disgusting thing my sister has ever seen in her life. He's supposed to be allowed to live in my grandfather's house as long as he keeps it as obsessively clean as the retired 80-year-old Swedish farmer who previously lived there. Down to the fact that dish soap should be kept in the cupboard below the sink, not next to the sink.... only because that's how my grandfather kept it, not because it's such a horrible thing to keep dish soap next to the sink where many if not most people house it. The kid's 25. The deal was a bust before it was ever made. I don't understand why it was done.
And on the topic of my brother, while I'm very happy for him, he moved home in the last few years (again) and became best buddies with my dad after a hospital stint for a horribly infected tooth. I'm happy me had a new "buddy dad," but I know the sides of my father he was seeing. He just doesn't remember or is able to look past the swings in the opposite direction that come with his high moods. He had even begun taking my father's life advice at full value, parroting it back to me as if I wouldn't know where these ideas had come from. After a date, he told me "Yeah, I figured out by the second drink that she had daddy issues. Best 20 bucks I ever spent." Finding out the inner workings of others for the general knowledge and potential for exploitation is why my father had such thoughts. My brother took my father's response and assumed it meant that it's better to find out now before he was emotionally attached (not to mention the fun irony of "daddy issues" being the reason he was no longer interested in the girl).
To accompany me, I brought my boyfriend of 3 years. I thought it was so sweet he was willing to come with, and that this way I'd have someone to be there for me amid what I assumed would be some family drama (though I hadn't expected exactly how much). But he wasn't really ready for the craziness. We all had a few drinks, and he got so drunk I spent the rest of the trip taking care of him and trying to handle my dad's death and my crazy family basically alone, except for one childhood friend who was very kind, but could only realistically be around for some parts of the daily events.
Nearly a week after returning back to where I live (1500 miles away), I'm finally resurfacing. I'm finally starting to come out of the haze. I have a therapy appointment for Friday, even though I'd left therapy a few months ago. Now.... I'm not sure. I guess just work and life for a while, but I feel so tired, so numb, so lacking in energy.
My dad prepared me for his death from a young age. He hadn't expected to live a long, full life and wanted me to be unsurprised and emotionally, logistically, and psychologically prepared for his passing. For the most part, I was. It is still sad to lose him. He won't be there when I get married someday. But at the same time, some horrible part of me is relieved. We ended on as good a note in our relationship as I think we could've (painful, but speaking on fairly polite terms). As he got older and less present mentally, I had to accept that we remembered my life very differently.
The rest of my family, however, was grieving in their own ways... and I have apparently been gone too long, since I no longer have much of a tolerance for some of the crap I used to put up with on a daily basis. My mother's way of coping is to be controlling about every small, inconsequential thing to the point of making everyone else's lives miserable. From whether my nephews have eaten a meal recently enough to insisting on cooking food nobody wanted to eat before we all went out to a restaurant. And every ounce of it came with a burning hatred of the world, confidence that now when she controls the imaginary conversations with my father, that he is always on her side, and no tolerance for any other person's feelings or plans.
My sister's marriage has been on the rocks lately. Before dealing with my father's death, I'd spent weeks taking phone calls from my sister crying, falling apart, and wanting help/advice on how to handle the situation at hand. Her husband had an online girlfriend for months and hadn't thought it counted as cheating. She'd been angry at him for years, he'd been angry at her for years, and they had only stayed together for the children amid financial crisis, her returning to college, and moving across the country back to the tiny f*ing town we're from, where my family quickly put every piece of their lives to the test. While I was there, she had finally started therapy, but was basically medicated out of her mind because she was overwhelmed with suicidal idealization and hasn't been able to handle day-to-day life since she moved home.
My nephews are adorable, and only made life happier. :-)
My brother finally has a job he likes. He works part time in a gun shop, so his only conversations are about guns. He lives for free in my grandfather's old house about an hour away from the rest of the family. The thing is that my mother doesn't own the house completely, my aunt owns half of it and would like to sell. My mother should, realistically, just sell the house. Use the money from half of it to help my brother with his lack of ability to support himself for any length of time that way. Instead, my aunt is holding her tongue to try and appease her crazy sister over a house nobody grew up in. My brother has lived there for 4 months for FREE, including the cell phone bill he still can't remember to pay. But he CAN make big plans to buy some fancy gun he wants to custom build. The other catch to his residence is the stupid f*ing deal my mother made him. His last apartment was apparently the most disgusting thing my sister has ever seen in her life. He's supposed to be allowed to live in my grandfather's house as long as he keeps it as obsessively clean as the retired 80-year-old Swedish farmer who previously lived there. Down to the fact that dish soap should be kept in the cupboard below the sink, not next to the sink.... only because that's how my grandfather kept it, not because it's such a horrible thing to keep dish soap next to the sink where many if not most people house it. The kid's 25. The deal was a bust before it was ever made. I don't understand why it was done.
And on the topic of my brother, while I'm very happy for him, he moved home in the last few years (again) and became best buddies with my dad after a hospital stint for a horribly infected tooth. I'm happy me had a new "buddy dad," but I know the sides of my father he was seeing. He just doesn't remember or is able to look past the swings in the opposite direction that come with his high moods. He had even begun taking my father's life advice at full value, parroting it back to me as if I wouldn't know where these ideas had come from. After a date, he told me "Yeah, I figured out by the second drink that she had daddy issues. Best 20 bucks I ever spent." Finding out the inner workings of others for the general knowledge and potential for exploitation is why my father had such thoughts. My brother took my father's response and assumed it meant that it's better to find out now before he was emotionally attached (not to mention the fun irony of "daddy issues" being the reason he was no longer interested in the girl).
To accompany me, I brought my boyfriend of 3 years. I thought it was so sweet he was willing to come with, and that this way I'd have someone to be there for me amid what I assumed would be some family drama (though I hadn't expected exactly how much). But he wasn't really ready for the craziness. We all had a few drinks, and he got so drunk I spent the rest of the trip taking care of him and trying to handle my dad's death and my crazy family basically alone, except for one childhood friend who was very kind, but could only realistically be around for some parts of the daily events.
Nearly a week after returning back to where I live (1500 miles away), I'm finally resurfacing. I'm finally starting to come out of the haze. I have a therapy appointment for Friday, even though I'd left therapy a few months ago. Now.... I'm not sure. I guess just work and life for a while, but I feel so tired, so numb, so lacking in energy.
