A precious gift

My sister and I got to see her only granddaughter today.. we were able to drive through and give Sienna her presents on the letter box and watch as she opened them, other friends drove by with balloons and greeting signs to wish Sienna a Happy 10th birthday… it was a precious gift even if we didn’t get to hug her….just to see the beauty in that family and the innocence and the continuation of our family line meant so much to me. I have been asked not to write about them by my nephew but I have to get this out there…I pray he understands this need I have.

It was the time of day my own mother was most alone.. She would come home from school to an empty house as Nana had to go out to work cleaning offices in the afternoons and evenings. Mum often told me that as an only child she used to sit on the back step watching with sadness and longing as neighbouring families with siblings played.. Mum was on her own and when she had her 4 children we were all born so far apart that we never got to have that same age closeness. My brother and older sister were born only 17 months apart but there lives went in such different directions… and they were separated.. we do not see much of my brother’s family which is sad.. When my sister had her embolism and subsequent breakdown my sister in law didn’t want her daughter anywhere near my sister.. so many fractures in our family dating from that time were a source of grief. God knows my sister in law lost her own mother so young maybe that is why she continued to stay angry with my Mum who did not know how to embrace her fully.

Maybe that is why, for me today was so special… even if we could not touch Sienna and her brothers we could send love, I looked into the eyes of the children and their parents and saw only love and after dropping my sister off I did breakdown driving home to think of how skewed at time my own emotional life has been by being left alone myself all of those afternoons after school, just as my mother was….When I did get married it was hard to feel close to my husbands siblings at times and being in recovery they started to say they thought I was not a good partner for their brother.. being sober I was ‘no fun’ and so in time they talked him into leaving me, but I also walked away from him when he needed me and could not explain how my therapy was not to exclude him.

So much to shed tears about today… I remembered how I forced myself to get on the plane and leave him all alone in 2002 knowing deep inside my heart it was wrong but feeling imprisoned by not being supported to continue my therapy and deep healing work.

It well and truly is all in the past now, but I still carry the heart break over the ancestral stuff. My Great Great Grandfather left his own father behind in 1874 sailing thousands of miles away with his wife and then 4 children and ending up divorced from my maternal GG grandmother who at that stage had 16 kids of whom 14 survived. I believe it was Thomas’s grandfather that lost 6 children by the time he died at various ages, some as babies, some as youngsters and some as young adults..

These days I am less bound by the ancestral things, I truly am reaching out for connection.. In a moment I want to ring an AA friend who reached out to offer me support yesterday.. I think of the terrible isolation I ended up in at the coast in 2004 and of how people in sobriety tried to get me out of it and to go into treatment.. instead I travelled deep down inside of myself and all of the ancestral stuff and am only really emerging from it in these later years.

Today I also shed a tear for Mum who could not be there today to see her young great grand daughter, but I feel sure Mum was with us.. After leaving the children my sister and I went to the shops and got a coffee and some supplies after driving home via our old house that we lived in during the 1970s. I dropped her home so happy that we could share the gift of today.. Even if we had to keep a distance from Sienna I am so grateful we were given the opportunity… so so grateful ❤ I keep praying in time that all of these ancestral tears will begin to mend in some way..