They are all gone now.
I believe that God does not put us here to live our lives in misery. When we are born, someone else makes decisions that become part of our future. I wish that I could say I was one of those people who remember their childhood almost back to infancy. But I come from a long line of victims of addiction who have had it impact everything and everyone they were connected to.
My picture perfect memories are more of family events because that is where all the action took place. Imagine that you have lived with your maternal grandmother since you were three months old. In fact, you were so small that she carried you around in her apron pocket. Now, that is what I have been told for over fifty years so it must be true. Anyway, grandma is definitely the matriarch. She and the patriarch of the family, who lived on the other side of the city, brought eight children into the world. In total, there were four boys and four girls (including the set of twins).
One sibling grew up and moved to Michigan, another moved cross-country to California and never returned, not even for his mother or father's funeral. Oh, almost forgot my mother is in this group. She moved, not quite as far and remained very emotionally and financially attached. In other words, she provided support for some of those that remained at home. According to my mother, she did all those things because of me. Therefore, I was sent nice clothes, money, etc. and sometimes visited her in the summer. Without getting into a lot of details, this did not reflect positively on my future. I was compiling my baggage at an early age.
I just gave you the numbers for that generation. So, let me take you to the next generation or their children (which would include me). The four girls had a total of eight children. I was a twin but my brother died at birth. It is still a mystery -- you did not get too much information out of them. So, three sisters had one child each and the oldest sister had five boys. Since I was an only and very lonely child, these five grew to be my brothers in so many ways.
Now the four boys of the first generation had a total of six children, to our knowledge two boys and four girls. The math will soon become not so precise as family members started an estrangement in their family relationships that also kept siblings from attending other siblings' funerals.
To sum this generation up, they carried their childhood baggage to their deathbeds. They argued mostly when one or more had been drinking and never settled anything. However, this same group would fight you to the death as a whole if you messed with one of them.
The next generation, that is where I come in, had approximately twenty-five or more children. I told you the math would get crazy. You see one of the five boys I referred to as brothers had so many that we are not sure of the count. In fact, I asked him at a family picnic, while videotaping him, how many children did he have, and, he could not name them all.
At this writing, I have become a great-grandmother at 68 years old. Oh, I'm happy about it. My grandchildren, of whom there are four, and now my great grandchild have never seen me drunk. I have almost thirty years in recovery that I am proud of. However, can't be too proud because that is one way to lose your sobriety. Well, all those eight children and the their parents, my grandparents, are long gone. Some of their anger and frustrations hung around for a while but most of my generation had already decided not to carry their baggage so we started on stopping the cycle.
Just as I was getting use to the idea of my mother and her siblings becoming the elders, they left us. Time came and went and I am one of the elders now. To make matters worse, only two of my five inherited brothers are still here. Our other cousins and spouses have gone the way of cancer or addiction. The bottom line is they are gone.
Two of us keep in touch with each other almost daily. We try to remind each other of good times, and there were many. We also commiserate about what our parents and their parents must have felt like at this time in their lives. We wonder if they worried if their children would be there for them if and when they could no longer take care of themselves. Well, we did take care and now we sit in the chair of fear because they are all gone now.
*This story was written without specific names and dates because it is an outline of a manuscript I am writing about my family.
Keywords: family, addiction, elders, family history
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They Are All Gone Now