The wreckage that is left contains wisdom and pearls

My nephew and his family fly out in few moments.  They leave me wiser.  I am so glad I had the courage to be with them as a family.  To watch and observe and feel and share funny times of laughter with the two youngest boys who filled my heart with love.  We played and were silly and wrote songs or poems together.  We laughed we joked and were silly as young ones.  That was the funny side.  The deeper sadder side was the visit to my sister’s memorial plaque yesterday afternoon, with my nephew, Mum and other sister.  I cried as soon as we got to the grave and felt so ashamed.  So many of the other graves had flowers in bloom, my sister’s memorial plaque is next to my Nana’s and there was only barren ground.  It seemed such a metaphor and reflection of emotional neglect which is the theme of our family and emotional history.  A family who strived and strived to achieve but so often abandoned self care.   I said to my nephew in tears how I felt we had abandoned our sister’s grave by not planting any plants around it, a reflection of how alone she was after the family fractured.

I found it hard to go there with my other sister and in fact got really angry with both her and Mum at the outset of the entire process of laying my sister’s ashes to rest.  I felt my sister would have preferred the ashes to be scattered, my Mum and sister wanted them buried in the earth.  Anyway its not really important as my sister is not in those ashes.  Her spirit left her body when she died and now there is the just the painful aftermath of a tragic life that ended in a care home with drugs having taken all the life, as well as the loneliness of so rarely seeing any family apart from my Mum, my other sister and me and in the last years both my Mum and sister were in hospital so often my other sister rarely saw them or even knew what was happening (ie that my sister tried to take her life in 2013).

I tried to fill a void for her that was larger than me.  Even yesterday it was me who drove everyone there, even though I was tired.  I was happy on some level to do it, but if I am totally honest another part of me was angry not to be driven.  I am the strong one.  I battle on and do the best to support.  But even as I write this I am glad I drove.  Life is not perfect and my own life has been full of loss but I do have the strength to face these things.

Later we went for a coffee and the talk turned to panic attacks.  My nephew’s wife has heart centred panic attacks.  Is it any wonder when I asked their oldest son what he wants to be he said a heart surgeon?  As the most sensitive one he is already containing the family wound that is generational and wants to heal it.  He looked so tired and so sad the entire time we were with my nephew and his family.   My heart was with him as he was so tired he needed to be in bed and that triggered a flash back to being with Mum and Dad at people’s house for dinner.  I was tired and bored and then they fed me alcohol and I threw up… it was Bacardi and it was horrible.

This visit has reminded me that the crux of all our family issues relate back to childhood emotional neglect.  This stems from the race for survival of my ancestors.  Addiction comes out of it as we use the addictions to push and push our bodies to extremes, or to dull our feelings, or to cope when we need to relax.  We talked a lot about these issues over the weekend.  Its obvious to me that alcoholism is on both sides of my nephew’s family.  Her family in South Africa are all big drinkers.  She now does not touch a drop, and was really listening when I told her how my own addiction took off after the years of trauma and Dad’s death.  I told her how nasty people were to me overseas in the two years after when I would act out after drinking due to unresolved grief.

My heart is with them today as the board the plane home.  I can truly say I have love and compassion in my heart for them.  I feel for how my nephew works so hard to support his family.  I feel great anger that when he asked my living brother for financial support (my nephew looked for a job not a hand out so he could move back to our home town and heal the fracture a few years before my sister died) my fucking selfish brother’s wife said NO!   And my brother had neither the heart nor the love to help or strength to tell his nasty emotionally shut down wife to back off and be kind  WTF???  My brother is worth millions by the way… its sick!  Am I wrong to feel this anger? Part of me feels it is immature.  But if family can, why won’t they help each other?   My nephew says that he and his wife bear them no hard feelings.  I think that is so noble and kind.   I feel so sad and ashamed of my brother. Is that wrong?  Its how I feel.  Money before heart.  I don’t understand it, I don’t understand it.  My father would turn in his grave or would he?

Anyway maybe they were better off away from that side of the family who when they look as any of us make us feel like insects or a piece of pooh not good enough to be on their shoe. And I feel reluctant to write that last sentence but I must be honest.

There is so much more I could write about what I leaned over the last two days, but I am going to take some time to make a lovely breakfast and be in the sunshine.   I am working through the anger I feel.  I know it comes out of hurt, love and grief.  I think anger on some level always comes out of longing to be seen and loved.  Once we can turn around to the angry self and talk to it we make better progress than acting it out.  We are then better placed to practice tenderness and self care.   In the end humans are flawed and hurt each other.  That’s the bottom line.  Desires and needs get thwarted and frustrated and it takes grace and maturity to deal with that.  In the end as adults it is we who must take care of ourselves and then find healthy others to share and be real with in every way.  Enough said at least for now!

(After reading this back I almost want to take the post down.  Really as an adult I needed to separate emotionally from this past.  I am still reliant on what I was given in terms of financial support as an early inheritance several years ago.  I haven’t, (due to PTSD) been able to work until now.  I will keep the post up, though.)