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I have been thinking about this all week, wondering if I would write it. I was thinking of it this morning when I woke up at 3:13. I was thinking of it again when I saw the clock at 4:13. I did fall back to sleep, but I don’t know when. My wish . . .
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My wish list is pretty short and pretty simple, however it seems pretty impossible.
I wish my oldest brother would get over whatever it was that made him walk away from his parents and siblings 15 years ago. I wish that our family could be whole again.
Honest to God, I have no idea what pushed him (them) over the edge. The only things I can imagine that would be bad enough to make me walk away from my family are unthinkable. I am the youngest of four, and this brother is the oldest, older than me by seven-plus years. He and his wife and their two children were living with my parents, trying to save money to buy a house. It was a bad idea from the start. The relationship had been volatile for years. They had lived with them before and it hadn’t gone well, but my parents felt that they couldn’t say no. When I questioned my dad about it, he told me that he had to say yes, even with misgivings, because what if one of the other kids needed help some day? How could they say yes to one of us if they had said no to them? I said “easy” and he laughed and said he wished that was the case.
It is a huge understatement to say that my mother and my sister-in-law are two very different people. It is a big house, but still tight quarters given the people involved, and things happened. My sister-in-law re-arranged stuff in my mother’s kitchen. My brother spent money that my parents didn’t think he should be spending when they were living rent free in their house to save money. My sister-in-law has a temper, my mother holds things in. My father is strong willed and opinionated, but certainly not mean spirited. Things were said, things were not said. It was pretty bad. Then my parents went away for a week of vacation. When they came home, my brother and his family were gone. The rooms that they had occupied were empty, and they were not gentle to the house on their way out.
Everyone was stunned. And that is when it got really bad. It got back to me that my sister-in-law had told people that my parents had kicked them out. I heard that they were sleeping on the floor of my sister-in-law’s mother’s one bedroom apartment. I found out that they found a house soon after. I don’t know if it was in the works when they snuck out of my parents’ house, but I have always assumed so. I had always been Switzerland in previous messes and had always been able to maintain contact when one side wasn’t talking to the other, but my brother basically told me it was him or my parents, I couldn’t have both. I got no answers as to why.
I tried for a while to keep in touch. I sent Christmas presents to the kids and they were returned. I ran into my brother at one point and had a civil conversation with him and thought, “maybe now enough time has passed.” I was wrong. He told me not to come to my niece’s, my godchild’s, First Communion, that I wasn’t welcome. That was when I stopped trying. I couldn’t set myself up to be hurt by them anymore.
Yet, I continue to hurt. I think about them all the time. Every. Single. Day. My niece was five when she was in my wedding 17 years ago, my nephew seven. That is the girl and boy I remember. I wouldn’t even know the woman that she is today at 22, the man of 24. I wonder what they think of us. I wonder what they’ve been told. My daughter is ten, and she doesn’t even know they exist. I keep saying that I need to have a conversation with her about them, but I don’t know how. On some level, she knows about my brother, because there are pictures of the four of us as children in my parent’s house, but no one really talks about them in front of the kids. How do I bring it up to her? How will I answer the questions that I know she will have? I have too many questions myself.
My brother has nieces and nephew’s he has never met. His children have cousins that they don’t know. Our grandmother passed away seven years ago. She lived with us for many years when we were kids, was a huge part of our lives, and she never got to see her great-grandchildren again before she died. My sister’s husband never knew my brother and his family. He has met them briefly once or twice. He knows the story, but didn’t live it. The Mailman lived it with me, and still gets to see me cry on the kid’s birthdays or when something has made me think about them more than usual. He hugs me and says nothing. There is nothing to say. He misses them, too. He and my brother were friends, played golf, had a few beers, liked the same music. My niece is the first baby he ever held, the first kid he ever knew well “from the beginning.” My other brother and his wife and kids were on the periphery of the whole thing. They live a ways away and didn’t live it day to day, so they were hurt, but not as profoundly as those of us that still live in the same town with family that has walked away from us. Yes, they still live in the town where we all grew up, as do my sister and I. My parents have lived in the same house for over 40 years.
So, my wish for this Christmas season, as my brother approaches his 50th birthday in February, is the same as it has been for too many Christmases now, to have my family whole again. Our parents are getting older. Mom won’t really talk about it, which is typical of her. Dad will talk about it too much given the opportunity; over analyze every sighting or mention of them. I know that things will never be the same, too much time has passed, too much has happened, but I believe that it isn’t too late for there to be some kind of relationship. I’ll send a Christmas card again this year, as I have done on and off for the past 15 years, and hope that maybe, just maybe, this will be the year that I get one back. I won’t be surprised if there isn’t one.
