Families and Funerals
It’s been a long couple of weeks for me. The funeral was a week ago, and was extremely hard. Which is a stupid thing to say because funerals aren’t actually meant to be easy are they? My mum was at her most inappropriate and even managed to get into an argument with my widowed uncle’s neighbour over seating. She also brought up my upcoming trip to Germany loudly to discuss how jealous my cousins are. Totally not the time mother.
I also found out that one of my cousins hit his wife. Apparently he was drunk and trying to leave the house to go to a friends place (where he would be doing drugs) and she grabbed him to stop him and he reached out and ‘accidently’ smacked her. They have a two month old together. I’m not sure what I can do about this. I’m trying to spend more time with his wife so that she’s not isolated and alone, but if she wants to write it off as a drunken accident and won’t listen to anything else I’m not sure what else I can do. If I push too hard she’ll stop talking to me and have less support next time.
Funerals are like big circus’. The amount of money it costs to put someone into a box and cover them in dirt is ridiculous. And it’s very hard to argue with grieving family members over the price of the casket they pick out. And then there were the arguements over which photos to use, which songs to play etc etc.
It’s all just too much and I’m glad to put the worst of it behind me for now. Of course my family still need support so I’m not totally out of the woods yet.
Bad News
My auntie died last night. They found her body under a tree in a park. Wednesday night she threatened to kill herself and walked out of her house. They found her body yesterday afternoon. When I first heard about her walking out, I rolled my eyes and went back to work. She has been threatening to kill herself for about ten years now, and has attempted it a few times, but only when someone was due home so she could be found.
We all wrote this off as attention seeking behaviour. And of course it was. You don’t do this to yourself if you don’t want help. But that doesn’t mean we should have ignored her, or that she was seeking attention in the same way a toddler throwing a tantrum is seeking attention. Why were we so dismissive of her? Where was our compassion and empathy and supportiveness when we were all needed?
She had five kids and four grandkids, one of whom was born about a month ago.
I had a lot more I was going to write on this last night, but I just can’t do it right now. I will follow up with a point at a later date.
Oh Brother
My brother’s 23rd birthday is coming up at the start of September. A month ago he told me he was planning it with someone from his work and confirmed the date it would be on. The date he picked is particularly heinous for me as I have a uni thing on all day. It’s about 6 hours straight of classes. Not lectures, actual tutorials that need me to think and debate and discuss. But, that’s one person on his whole guest list, so that’s ok, I can deal.
Yesterday he tells me that nothing has been planned and he can’t be bothered and he can’t even decide between just going to the pub, or going somewhere for dinner first. So my sister and I spent half an hour on the phone going through options and coming up with the perfect night. My brother decides he doesn’t like the suburb we picked and that he’d prefer to do it in the city. He also said he’ll have to check with the girl at work and if she doesn’t have any ideas, we’ll just go to [pub x]. This really irritated me so I threw the towel in there and told him he was on his own.
Today, he sends me an email and copies in this girl from work and my sister and says ‘organise anything as long as it’s in the city’
I’m so close to throwing something at his head, it’s not even funny. Giant Babies oozing with white male Privilege make me sick. Even when they’re relatives.
