Dealing With Family

I think dealing with family after a death is harder than dealing with the death itself.

After all the hugging, the crying, the consolation, the bickering begins. When does it end? Everyone copes with death in their own way. When it's manslaughter-something so tragic and unthinkable, all emotions are heightened. Grandma wants her son buried because she believes cremation condemns the soul to burn in Hell. The kids want cremation because dad mentioned it to a few people several years ago. Grandpa wants a Lutheran priest to preside over the ceremony because dad was Baptized Lutheran as a child. His kids have no preference because they weren't raised in any religion. Who's right? Doesn't matter-he's still dead and the family fights over what they want and what they think he wants and what the kids want and what the parents want.

The oldest child is in denial. The son lost his father at 19. The middle girl wants to control everything. Grandma picks a fight over a can opener. She already owns 4. One daughter feels she was closer to her father than anyone else. The other daughter doesn't know how to be a big sister and stop the pain. Who asked his son how he feels? Grandma is extremely demanding of the second oldest's time and energy. The eldest lives in another state and doesn't have the constant reminder. A son visits his father's cross by the road every week. So does his sister. Another sister doesn't have that luxury.

Whose shoulder do you cry on when nobody understands what you are going through? When you resent each other for their relationship, their distance, the responsibility they take on unnecessarily and the role they avoid?

A man walked across the street to get a bag of ice. He had health problems. Failing eyesight and hearing loss. Lasting issues from a broken foot that healed incorrectly years ago caused him to hobble with help from a cane. He was offered a ride, but chose to walk because that's what the doctor recommended. This father was  doing what little he could to get healthy so he could one day walk his daughter down the aisle and enjoy his grandkids. 


This man made it to the store, got his ice, and walked back across the road. The crosswalk was marked, but uncontrolled. A yellow diamond with an adult and child outlined walking stood 50 feet before the lines. The street light above it was out on a cloudy, overcast day at dusk. 


A driver had 5 hours of sleep and had been on duty for 11 hours on his way back to the office from a trip to Yuma which would end his work day. He drove with no headlights on. He drove through a crosswalk. He felt the impact and heard the BOOM and slammed on his brakes. Skid marks from the rear tires begin in the crosswalk. 


Witnesses say the man had 1 foot on the sidewalk and one more step to safety. 


A fatality occurred on this day of this month of this year at the corner of X and Y when a pedestrian was was hit by a semi truck in a crosswalk. The 49-year-old father leaves behind three kids ages 24, 22, and 19, his mother and father, two brothers. Aunts. Uncles. Cousins and nephews. A great nephew 6 months in the womb. Two ex-wives, one the mother of his children. Friends. Co-workers. 


The pedestrian was rushed to that hospital in critical condition where he died from injuries sustained in the accident. The driver was uninjured. 

He frustrated me and never got to the point and took 2 hours to say three sentences and he had a curly white-boy-fro and a mustache that tickled when he kissed me good-bye and I talked to him when I had a bad day at work and he wanted a dog for Christmas and he wouldn't let me get my driving permit at 16 without him and he wanted a Google printout of my new house in Vegas which I mocked him relentlessly for and I was going to bring pictures next time I saw him and that time never came.

I can't be everything to everyone. You want me to fake it and I don't know how. For you, I would, but I don't know how to be something I'm not. I'm not even sure I have that energy. I can't fight with you because a man died and that man was my father. Too. He belonged to us both and there is grief in my heart as in yours. I'm not the big sister you looked up to and wanted me to be. I can't solve this problem and I can't make you happy and I just end up doing and saying everything wrong. Nothing about this situation is right, so why should I be? Denial gives me the strength to not drown in your tears. My heart is just as broken as yours and breaks more each day I see your pain. And I can't be the person you want me to be-the big sister I want to be for you.