family and ways to die

My auntie (Becky) has cancer and has gone home to the family to die. She's being taken care of by my other aunties along with hospice workers. She's staying with Cathleen, and Lue and Debra are helping out. Becky is smoking like a chimney and has basically given up. Lue (my father's twin) is a fixer, and she's remarkably like me. Well, I'm remarkably like her, since she came first.

She isn't handling well the idea that anyone can just give up and die. She has a special heat bed that she has been foisting on her family, and she has been suggesting different things such as vitamins and healthy foods in order to help Becky get better. Some other aunties are giving her the smackdown for it. They are giving her such a hard time because she cares enough to try. I know you're wondering how many aunties I have. Well, it's a bunch.

There are ten aunts and uncles, and seven are female. Yikes. Anyway - Lue is driving herself batshit over this, and I feel her pain. I've been as supportive as I can, and I've been trying to help her fend off the bad aunties and crazy cousins who are basically psychotic on our family website. Ann Marie is the worst auntie, and Gail has been a fucking psycho for some time. She has really been off the edge since I have known her. It's incredibly hard for anyone to deal with death, especially when the person and the caregivers have totally given up and seem resigned to it when there is hope.

My mom and I didn't get along until right until the end before she died, and she wasn't doing anything to prolong her life at that point. She knew she was going to die and didn't care and god that really PISSED ME OFF! I mean, I was only a kid, what was I going to do? I couldn't convince her to get on the list for a heart transplant, or surgery to get a defibrillator like the one I've got. She wanted to die.

I ended up deciding to go and visit her and really just spend quality time with her for her last birthday (she died 6 months later). It drove me crazy how sick she was, and she was concerned about making sure she gave me things she wanted me to have before it was too late. My lesson there was that she had made up her mind she was okay to die regardless of the fact that she had me, Tina, Julie and Dave as well as Chris and Angela who were 11 & 9 who still needed a parent.

I know she decided a long time ago that she was done being a mom to me, I remember her saying that her "kids were grown" so she could go and have a life, but I was 9 at the time. That's hardly grown.

My point is she didn't care who she left and didn't care that she was going to die and she could have stopped it. She did not have to die the way she did. She did not have to leave before she and I worked our shit out. I spent years just being so fucking angry with her that she never gave us a chance to get our shit straight. What kind of mother does that?? Jesus Christ. I'm still so fucking angry that she didn't care enough to live.

And there was nothing I could do about it.

Ugh!

There was one fucking thing I really needed to blog about today but for the life of me I cannot recall what the fuck it was. Maybe swearing? Huh.

I am pretty disturbed by my brother's wedding. It's set for the same weekend as another friend is tying the knot so I can't go anyway - but the whole family thing disturbs me. I'm being crushed under the expectation from my father that I will go the four hours' drive and spend all day and night outside in the Minnesota heat with mosquitoes and people I don't like all to keep the peace.

Right.

I've had this discussion with the boyfriend because he knows how forceful my dad can be and he is worried about my well-being if I'm forced to endure a family function. I have had serious issues with family members for years, and cut off all contact with just about everyone a long time ago. Right now I see my Dad (plus step-mom, sister) in San Diego about once a year, and besides that I go onto the family website and talk to a couple of aunties and a cousin. We don't see each other and haven't for years. I'm okay with that.

I don't speak to the rest of my immediate family. My mother's been dead for years. My sisters who live up north in Minnesota are pretty much dead to me already. My brother may as well be too, except for this wedding thing and he's on the family site once in a while.

Last year one of sisters was diagnosed with a nasty cancer and I was contacted by the oldest one so that I could "fix" everything for them like I always had done. I made the mistake of feeling like I was obligated to go up there and visit. I took the BF and went up to the woods of Hickville, Minnesota and boy what a bad move on my part. I was a total depressed mess for months. I couldn't work effectively or deal with anything in my life. I was blowing off everything and everyone because I was such a mess. I could easily say my sister had cancer so it would explain why I was a mess but that was a lie while still being true. I also could have said that I had been in the hospital around the same time my sister had been, plus been diagnosed with UC and on a lot of medications that also messed me up. True, but still I considered it an excuse.

The truth was and is still that my family is dysfunctional and I hate my brother and sisters and don't want to see any of them as long as I live. I have very good reasons for hating them and I may go into it one day.

That I hate them is one thing. That my father, who I do not hate, wants me to spend time with them in order to spend time with him, because he's going to the wedding, is another thing entirely. He wants for the family to get together and go up to the goddamned Reservation and talk about how poor we all were and look at the tar paper shacks that have no electricity or running water. As a kid I wasn't impressed with extreme poverty, and I'm not now either. I don't want to act like the devoted little sister I used to be. I don't want to have to pretend that I don't want to stick a fucking crowbar into my brother's head. I want to be free of the whole mess. I mean, my father left the fucking Rez and went thousands of miles away to California for a REASON. And I don't mean Vietnam. Once he got back he left permanently and could only be bothered to come back when my brother was on the lam after killing someone and we were all in the newspapers and being followed by the FBI for over a month.
He also came back for my wedding - and said my sister's name when he was standing up for me. Thanks a whole fucking lot, Dad. Don't worry, my mother said the wrong name too. It's not like anyone was going to give me any respect, like ever, even on my fucking wedding day.

Yeah. So what I don't need is to spend any time with my family that doesn't involve me flying to the safety and cleanliness of California, renting a car, and being on my own terms.