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What is the deal down there, anyways.

It's bizarre, I think, to realize something like that. To sit there eating my blueberry pancakes and suddenly come to that realization. I just watched a family fall apart. I saw a family completely disintegrate over the course of a week. My dad told me my mom and her sister are like gasoline and fire. "They're just waiting." And now, with no parental ties to keep them together, all of the siblings split. A weekend was all it took for that part. My mom and my aunt won't ever speak again. And my uncle?My uncle spent most of his best years taking care of his parents--my grandparents. My mom moved out of state, my aunt moved to a different city, but he stayed and lived with both of them. He took care of his mom when she got sick with her cancers and degenerative addictions and whatnot. His hair, what's left of it, is completely gray. He married and divorced once, before he dropped everything to take care of his parents. He's still single. When his mom died, he went nearly catatonic for a few days. Just completely emotionally devastated. Then, his dad died. And now he's just completely, well, broken.

Everybody felt bad for him. I felt bad for him. My dad felt bad for him.And then my dad came back from California.

I've learned, from my many years of experience, that there's a dark side to everything. Everything is two-faced. There's the decoy and the truth. And the truth is never the face you like to see. Knowing that is why I have a hard time investing myself completely in anything. Some people call that cynical.

The truth to this story is that maybe my uncle isn't quite so deserving of pity. The house is filled to the brim with filth and garbage. He hasn't had a job in years and hasn't tried particularly hard to find one. He actually didn't really take care of anybody, he just watched movies all day. And the best part--my favorite reveal--he asked his dad for money. His dad, a 70-something retiree slowly dying of cancer, heart disease, and monetary hemorrhaging. My dad came back from spending a weekend with him and told me the man is headed straight for a homeless shelter. "There's just nothing else you can do with someone like him."

I mean, the guy is only, like, 40. I hope I don't get relegated to a homeless shelter when I'm his age. I hope I actually manage to do something with my life. I hope I grow up and do good things. I hope I grow old and leave behind a book of all the great things I did. I hope I die and everybody goes to my funeral remembering something nice I did for them. And I hope that the flip side to it all, the big reveal, is that I actually did all of it.

And I hope that whatever family I leave behind doesn't just completely fall apart as soon as I shut my eyes.I think people are a little put off that I'm not upset about my grandparents dying. I am absolutely okay with cracking jokes about it, too. I mean, it happens. What are you going to do, cry about it? Grandparents die every day. It can't always be somebody else's grandparents every time. I'm not that special. That's just how it goes. I'm not upset or sad or emotionally moved in any way. I'm just tired. I just want to sleep it off. That sounds pretty nice.

I know a couple of people in California who are sleeping it off right now, actually. Lucky.

Comments

Carolynn said…
That's as valid a response as anything.
April 7, 2010 at 11:32 AM
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