Of course she was talking about murder. In family arguments, though, it often seems that this rings true of things said that can never be unsaid or feelings hurt that cannot be unhurt. Excepting murder, I always have a glimmer of hope, sometimes way up at the front of the cave into which I've crawled or followed others in to dark areas where few creatures live, that, with time, heated arguments will cool, feelings and words will soften in intent, and mending of fences will eventually happen. Frost knew, however, that mending a fence only means mending the division between people, so even if fences are mended, a fence still exists.
At the risk of throwing together so many metaphors that you won't know what to do with, I will say that I don't know any way out of this quagmire of bad feeling between me and my siblings except to one day, and it won't be soon, say "I forgive you" or "I'm sorry." The misunderstandings are extensive and come from vast differences in upbringing (even in the same family), environment, and experience. Our ages span three decades and our adolescent years, which I believe shape our personality as much as the first five years of life, were spent in different times with different social histories and in different places with different people. My eldest brother spent two years in Vietnam after he was drafted; I was seven then. He married when he returned home, and I was still a little girl.
By the time I was 15, my three older siblings had been living their adult lives, while I was embarking on adolescence and still growing into my adulthood. My sister, even younger, was disconnected, too, from the older ones; she was closest to me in age, and, as a result, is closest to me now. My coming of age took place in the 70s with college around the corner in the 80s, very different times from the 50s and 60s in which my two older brothers and older sister lived with my much younger parents. As time passed, my parents grew more tired and less parental it seemed, although there was a resurgence of discipline when the youngest, Teresa, began to spread her wings in high school. In college by then, I was not there to see their fear that their youngest daughter was becoming an independent woman.
All five of us are siblings and have the same parents, but that is not enough for us to get along or agree; this would be okay if civility were intact when tempers flared. This is not the case with most families, I assume, and certainly not with mine. One thing that we might be able to point to that is similar for each of us is that we were brought up to be independent and think for ourselves. We were taught to work for everything we have and be thankful that we are able to work. Beyond the work ethic, though, our personalities could not be more individual and different. These differences cause unrest, especially when we are discussing emotionally charged issues such as how to handle our situation with our mother, now in assisted living and suffering short-term memory loss that has been diagnosed as early dementia. The volatile cocktail of educational, regional, emotional, and physical differences is one that explodes when discussing our mom and her needs and wishes.
What's done is done, and I could go on. My brain hurts from thinking and over-thinking everything, from replaying and rewinding to replay events of the past week, from loving my mom unconditionally, and from placing conditions on the love for my older siblings.
No comments:
Post a Comment