Letting delusions go

I know I am still somewhat delusional when it comes to my family.  In my imagination a healing will come one day, they will start to open up and finally give me what I wanted all along.   I know this is not true but its a powerful magical wish and I can contort my reality a hundred ways to try to defend my heart from the pain of the shattering truth that it just aint gonna happen.  The miracle is that I still have love in my heart for them.  

I just got home from the visit to see my sister with my brother.   I sat on the bed and cried in silence for most of the visit.  I am not even going to try to intellectualise about what was really going on.   In time the talk turned around to the fact Mum’s ashes are still at the crematorium unclaimed nearly one year after her death.  My sister has had two hospitalisations since then and I have broached the subject. Its painful and fraught with grief as my father died in 1985 and he is buried on the other side of the cemetery in a grave that is just neglected.  I went there a long time ago with Mum to try and clean it up and plant a rose bush but over time it fell into neglect again.  Then my sister also tried to clean it up but all on her own.  When Mum died she asked that her ashes be buried with Dad but my sister has not been up to it and last week her nephew who does not contact me, nor I him, asked what was happening. 

I cried all through this discussion today.  I just said I wanted Dad disinterred and cremated and back over with my Nana (Mum’s mum) and my sister in the peaceful garden where both their ashes are buried.  This won’t happen as it’s not what Mum asked for but I just feel sad for my Dad who seems to be in exile and for Mum’s remains which seem to have been neglected.   I know I am transferring ideas on to this which are probably not real but my deep deep feelings of grief are, but why was I the only one showing any emotion today?  Anyway both of them were kind and just let me cry they were not dismissive or nasty in any way.

Never mind I just went to have a coffee after dropping my brother back to his part time office and I wrote on a piece of paper….this is what it is, I have to accept and live in the reality of it.  Despite the fact I cried and said I do not really want to have to collect the ashes alone neither of them volunteered to come.  I could ring my nephew and ask him. 

“Do you really want the ashes at your place?” my brother asked.  Yes, I would rather Mum was here with me until we can finally lay her to rest and a year on seems a good time to do it. It painful to me that her ashes are sitting over there all alone.

It was actually really nice to spend time with my brother.  He wasn’t waiting for me when I turned up to collect him.  I waited 5 minutes then phoned him as my anxiety level grew he was so apologetic as he told me he just got immersed in work (my anxiety dropped and I didn’t take it personally).  He loves his work and lives for it, I am not going to say its all about emotional distancing anymore, for how do I know what goes on inside of him, I just don’t not really. 

We spoke about how my sister seems to have little passion for anything and Gary said he did not know how he would live a live without his work.  Emotions don’t really register but I am sure they are there with my brother.     Sitting on the bed with my spine twisted around at the psyche facility (my sis and brother were sitting in chairs)  I felt in very different space and quite weak and had a bit of a head ache.  Now I am home I feel more like myself.   I cried a lot when I arrived home but the sadness has passed now.   

Fact is I don’t really know how to ‘be’ in my family, I can only be myself.   I am not secure in the family but I am myself when I am with them.  I don’t want to make up any stories about how it is anymore.  Today the words of the Al Anon closing came to me ‘let there be no gossip or criticism, instead let the understanding, peace and love of the fellowship grow in you.”  How do I not know my family is not just God’s unique design?  We all have our part to play and our differing temperaments.   I only want to be in love and acceptance now not anger and pain and resentment.   I don’t want to live in my head or ideas or defences about my family, how real are they anyway?   

 All I know is each time I push through defences to show up and be in my Leo North Node I come out feeling good even thought I go through a lot of pain before that good feeling comes.  I hear a lot of voices telling me to stay separate and not show up but in the end its better if I do.  I have to show up in my body instead of live with the ideas in my head, then my energies flow, even if these tears are not only mine I can shed them, are they personal or collective?  I really don’t know.  I have some ideas but who knows if they reflect the reality or are delusional?