Conversations with My Brother

I had a real interesting conversation with my brother the other day.

Without getting into his story, my brother is going thought what I like to call his “bag of crap”. Meaning he is of that age, 30’s, when you start going through all your family and dysfunctional baggage, trying to figure out what it all means and how it really affects your life as an adult. With my mother gone, my father useless, and I being the older sibling, I am the one that keeps the memories..and can provide some truth and understanding.  He was so young when so much of our family history went down, it must be harder to figure out how they messed us up if you don’t even really know what happened!
I’m happy to fill him in.

Releasing Old Family Anger

As I have said before, my dad is no winner.

I don’t have many good memories of him, but I don’t have memories of a “horrible” childhood.. at least not until I got to be a teenager. For the last four years of my parents marriage, I often think that their only common bond left was “Why is Claudia wearing THAT?” I’m not even angry anymore. I just really don’t have it in me to care.

And that’s a part of what we spoke about.  At this point, I have processed my parents failings.  I really don’t have many emotions left anymore regarding it all and it was interesting to try to back into the HOW I got this way for his benefit.

I used to be VERY angry at my father. Like I threw a knife at him when I was 18 and he told m, no joke,  to be a whore or a surrogate  to pay for college because he was taking my college fund in the divorce.  Even after I relinquished Max I was still very angry at him for I did see that my choice in hooking up with Max’s father was a possible attempt at finding a “father figure”.

I did, however, write him out something like a five page later when I was 19 or 20 blasting him for everything and listing out the way he wronged me and how he was a lousy dad. I even mailed it off to him, though I never got a reply.  And that’s OK as far as I am concerned. It’s gone, for all I care. I took all that anger and sent it back to him. I don’t need that anymore in my life.

I recommended that my brother do the same.  Just let him have it. Let him reap what he sowed.

At Peace with My Mother

My brother has better memories of my mom. Or maybe not better, just different.

He was younger, just 14 when she dies, so there are no adult versions.  Plus he didn’t have the teen angst really with her; she was dying, he behaved!   But even though I know she also contributed to the loss of Max, I don’t  harbor anger there either. She wasn’t perfect, but no one is. I know she loved us and she tried to do her best. I KNOW she regretted us losing Max. I know she wanted to be there with me to welcome him home. It was some of the last words said to me on her deathbed.  I like to think that if she was still here, she would be so supportive, so happy..and I think she might have contributed to the fact that we managed to find him in only three days. Plus, with my mom, I was an adult. We had had it out a few times, so by time she was dying, we were OK.

My mother had great common sense and my father was so good at tests. That’s the one thing that my brother and I agree on that was good that we got from my dad. His ability to test well.. which ALL my kids do too..and a really good nose.  Other than that, I have little use anymore for a father in my life.. or at least THAT father in my life.

Genetic? Nature Nurture?

Interestingly though, we were talking about family in general and our family specifically.

None of us are very great for keeping in touch much.  Like seriously, I talk to my brother.  I don’t call others. They don’t call me. The last time I saw my Uncle, who  lives 2 hours away, was when Scarlett was a baby. They have never met my youngest son. We don’t get invited to holiday dinners or things like weddings or funerals and I have stopped inviting  him because I am tired to the rejection. It sometimes makes me sad.. if nothing else than just thinking about how my grandmother would be so disappointed in HER family falling away.

And the thing is, I’m not even blaming other people. I see that part of it IS me. I’m just NOT good that it. It’s like, I’m not sure what to DO with family outside of my own immediate people.

So my brother and I talked about how it’s weird. How we have like barely any cousins.. though at least he is more connected with some of the younger ones. I am so completely removed by now. We’re just cut off.

But the funny thing is.. my father was ALSO completely removed from much of his family when I was growing up (and now my one cousin has decided she hates me so I can’t reconnect at all). As we talked and shard that we kind of feel the same way about family, it occurred to me that perhaps we got this too from our dad; this inability to connect, or the lack of need, or just the failings to do so like other’s do.

I usually see the family connections, or lack of, as a failing on my part.

Sometimes I think it’s because I was hurt and therefore have a mistrust. Sometimes, I think I’s just because I am a horrible person or something. Sometimes I blame the affects of relinquishment..after all, when you give your baby away to strangers when he is a newborn, you really can’t get all emotional over Christmas cards from cousins.

Maybe it’s the way I was raised, but maybe it’s all of the above… and maybe, just maybe, it’s just the way we are wired.

Maybe it IS genetic.

I don’t know and perhaps I never shall, but  in helping my brother unpack his baggage, I found a little parcel of something that had my name on it.

Thank You, My Brother

I remember when my brother was born. My Grandmother died when he was under a year, but my mother used to say that Grandma was so happy to have him. My mother went to a psychic medium once who told her that Matt “had to come through to her” for some reason.. to be there for her..like a gift. I don’t doubt that at all,  since my mother’s goal was to live long enough for him to graduate high school.

I can’t help wondering if maybe, Matt also had to come through for me.

If I didn’t have my brother I wouldn’t have any family to talk to at all. AT the time, I told my parents that I really wanted a ten speed bicycle, NOT a baby brother, but I sure am glad now.

I know I don’t say it enough to anyone: I love you, Matt.