My parents could never have facilitated it as neither communicates well and my mother did not have kind intent. It takes a strong head of household to do something like that to bring the family together. Family was not talked about with respect in my FOO.
This seems so strange to me, SWOT. Part of my fascination with Judaism was all the laws governing how family was to interact. I imagined all Jewish families got it right and made special foods for holidays and celebrated with purposeful intent, the men's voices singing the blessing.
In my imagination, that is just how it was.
Candlelight reflecting from the faces.
A little more gossipy than the ex's smaller family, but it was a huge family and when somebody was down, the entire family would unite to be of support.
Everyone does tend to have a nose in everyone else's business in a healthy, well-bonded family, that is true. My FOO does not celebrate the births of the family's babies, and they do not celebrate (or pay for, or feel their daughters or sons are entitled to) weddings. They twist everything having to do with a death. Nothing is sacred because family is seen as meaningless. There is no effort that is too little a thing not to do. One of the roles is "person saving the family", or "person believing in family".
That was me.
Now it is my sister. But she only believes in her own family, and it makes me just want to spit that between she and my mother, she's pulling it off.
roar
I am jealous about that. That they have family and I don't and I don't want to hear about how hard it is for her, that manipulative little brat. That is what she said, last time I talked to her. That my brother calls all the time now (and they pick up), and that she needs me because her life is falling apart and she is doing everything and blah blah and
roar.
Ahem.
Because I did not feel I deserved it for myself. I waited until it was offered, in a manner that it could always be withdrawn.
"...in a manner that it could always be withdrawn."
Copa, I don't know enough about your position to say, but it seems that you have created enough financial fortune to be without work for some time so...could you be withdrawing, now that your mother has passed and your child's life is not safe, could you be withdrawing financial security from yourself as some way to apologize to your mother for having defied her by creating financial independence in the first place?
And yet you chose as a husband a man who has not one of these qualities. Nor would he tolerate or be influenced by same. You chose an incorruptible man. How was that Cedar?
I made him that way.
:O)
I don't know, Copa. My father was a man of integrity. I like that in a man: integrity, a sense of strong self instead of approval seeking.
D H and I have had to recommit to one another and to our marriage and our kids time and again. It is true what they say: Long term marriage is something you leave and return to time and again. We have hated one another with equal intensity. I have been afraid of
D H as he (so he claims) has sometimes been afraid of me.
I told D H once that if he ever hit me, I would pour boiling water on him while he slept.
We both have been ready to declare divorce a thousand times, but somehow, even now, when we have two places we could go, no one leaves without coming back.
Somehow, I just keep finding that clear feeling of singing, or of the ring of crystal, with my D H.
For heaven's sake, I sound like an idiot.
This is what I think I know: We bring ourselves together to work through unresolved issues. Divorce happens, I think, when the issues are resolved or when we cannot work through them with that partner. We leave one and put ourselves right back into relationship with what is basically the same person until our issues are resolved.
My mother was ready to be married again within months of my father's death
and this was appropriate. Had my mom escaped the twisting sickness in our family, she may have had a chance to reclaim herself, free of the shame of what happened, of who she became, of who her children were. In essence, this is what the Greek Orthodox priest believed he was here to do, and is part of the reason he continued to put himself in the position he did, relative to my sister, who hates him with a passionate intensity similar to the hatred she feels for my D H.
Well, and as we are learning, for me, too.
But my sister used my mom's guilt at never having been the mother my sister needed to create what now exists. The exclusion, the role-playing, the brittle hatred, the arrogance and toxicity of it.
Isn't that something.
Yes, Cedar. Me too. I think I was always afraid. My Mother was very, very powerful. I was very controlled by her. Even though I fought it. Rebelled. I was always controlled.
I don't know, Copa. We were shamed and battered and terrorized into fitting receptacles for an abuser's grandiosity. Grandiosity is a fraud. True power is invariably kind, and calming, and strong.
Truly powerful people accept us where we are without either judging us or joining us, there where we struggle.
It is a settled thing, to interact with someone with true power.
I think that, like my mom too Copa, your mom was not universally strong; I wish for our sakes that our mothers had been strong in an intact way. My mom had been badly hurt, or she had other problems. She seemed strong and whole and absolutely correct arbiter of the world to me because that is what mothers seem like to children.
But damage was done Copa, to you and to me.
Our mothers were not strong; not strong enough.
But here is the thing we can take away from that: If we are strong enough to see our ways through the very things that broke our mothers, then we will be very strong, indeed. Our mothers were strong, Copa.
My mother was very strong; very bright.
But she was not strong enough.
I am.
You are.
You just don't know it, yet.
And go ahead and bury you, forgetting about the flag.
But never, ever facing...herself. Never, ever, rising above whatever it was to stop twisting her own daughters. Ariana Huffington talks of her mother Copa, and of her daughters, very often. I have learned there the way it should be.
I will find a link for you.
That, those women, those daughters ~ that is how it should have been for us.
I believe he feels he deserves to live and die just exactly as he chooses. To him, his autonomy is more important than his life. I am beginning to understand. I am almost at the point of accepting his terms.
I am beginning to accept that this is the right thing for me, too.
As a man.
And, as importantly, I will have taken away my son's life in order to save it.
This is what I see in your son's behavior. Rage at his position, rage at his dependence, rage that you know how it is for him and with his life.
I am beginning to accept that this is the right thing for me, too.
His life is not more important than mine.
This is what I told my mother 8 months before she died: Your life is not more important than mine.
It was a horrible thing to say, and in the two years and a half since then I have nearly died with the shame of it.
Copa...this is where you must work, then.
Your life is only yours. You cannot give anyone even one more minute of the time alloted to their lives
but they can take your allotment; they can take the rites of courage and growth and integrity; they can and they will, suck that energy that is your energy into the service of their sickness, of their strange and wicked grandiosity.
Life is a miracle, Copa.
You, just as you are and with every flaw and wonder in you, are here on purpose, Copabanana.
You.
You have a thing to accomplish or you would be gone from life.
You have to perform with integrity, Copa. We all have to do our best, even if we change our minds all the time about what that best thing is.
That is our side of the bargain, Copa.
You are doing well. It only feels really good? When we are cheating.
If I dedicate myself to controlling my son's medical care, which is the longest of long shots: going to court, trying to declare him incompetent. Forcing treatment. Supervising him. Seeing if he has swallowed the medicine or hiring somebody to do the same.
I will never win. It will never work. Even in prisons where they have thousands of people working in a controlled environment, they cannot win in a battle such as this. And, as importantly, I will have taken away my son's life in order to save it. And I will likely give up my own life trying.
I'm sorry, Copa. What a horrible position to be in.
Neither choice is the right one and yet, a choice must be made. But what seems like the right choice today may change, tomorrow. Or tomorrow, there may be a cure. or an earthquake. Ten thousand things can happen, Copa. That is small comfort, but it is true.
When I was in the thick of it with daughter, I lost my faith. Boom. Just like that. Gone. So, I started saying "yes". I took care of someone's cats. I began at the gallery. I took a religion class because someone asked. I drove instead of being afraid of it. I washed the car.
I just said "yes".
And so...I lived.
And once I made it through that, Copa? I decided my FOO was small potatoes and determined to have at them once and for all. And when I am sad about what I learned there?
I remember what it was like to lose faith.
And I remember that I went through that alone; I may have gone through it at all because of them, because of the sickness in them, and the sickness in me.
I decided to heal.
You did too.
So did SWOT.
And we are.
You are going to come through this changed, Copa. But come through it, you will.
I think it will not be so long a time, now. Months, still, but not years.
Or it could be an instant, Copa.
I am losing. I am very tired. I will keep losing. The more I go on, the more I will lose. I will lose myself. Am I really helping him? He does not think so.
My life is as important as my son's.
"I will keep losing...." Until you let go, Copa. You will keep losing until you let go.
This is what your son chooses. The only thing you will be letting go of, once you do let go, is conflict over who gets to choose what for whom. The facts will be the facts.
Your life is your life, Copa. Your son's life is your son's life. Each of us has his or her own destiny and will learn many things through it
and that is why we are here, Copa. You are learning, now. So am I.
Or we would be already gone.
So is your son, and he is making that clear to you.
Respect him enough to try what he says he wants. Let go, Copa.
If you can do it, let go.
We are right here, Copa. Small comfort, but very real support and concern and cherishment and hope.
It's going to be alright, Copa. Everything else hasn't worked; nothing else has worked. Like me, here you are too Copa with nothing left to do but let go.
Cedar
One day at a time, one hour at a time, one moment at a time. Don't worry about what will happen next. You can't know that. Enjoy now.
