And So It Is Ended

“Na, we’re just going to stay home,” was his answer to her invite for Christmas dinner and with that she knew it was over.  He was the final reconnaissance mission tactic to pull the rest of them together.  Only with this one brother’s compliance would a possibility exist for them all to come together, try to find a way through all the muck, the layers of scars, the anger that had expanded far beyond their abilities to see if there was any heart left between them to forge a path to a mend.

With that one apathetic response, she saw the door slam shut on the family she didn’t really like much but desperately sought to find a way back to loving them.  It wasn’t her fault.  It wasn’t any of their faults.  They were given no fertile ground with which to grow from.  It was the fault of two people, parents now gone from their lives.  But she knew she was too old now to keep blaming her parents, they who had no idea what they were passing along.

But it wasn’t blame that was screaming at her now.  It was the anguish in knowing her history would not be remembered or shared with those who had lived it with her.  They wouldn’t share either the joys or sorrows of her life.  They wouldn’t know her children’s spouses or their children.  Would they even know if she passed on?

Two people so caught in their own disquiet, created an aura of turmoil, disregard, indifference and lovelessness in which four children raised themselves, constantly stepping over one another, pushing each other out of the way, in search of that elusive parental recognition that never came. The costs were great.

She had asked her own family their thoughts on inviting their aunts and uncles to Christmas dinner.  “Why would you put yourself through that again?” her children asked.  But they had no idea why she needed this, a recognition of having lived a life, of being a daughter, a sister; the need for someone to bear witness to the stories of her early life. Her children didn’t need to know those stories she finally decided.  What isn’t known cannot be repeated.  No one would accept the invitation anyway.  And so it was ended.