Pearl

My lovely, courageous sister-in-law died today.  She was a delight, but leery of family, since family had harmed her.  When I was growing up, I used to believe that my father thought that we weren't children at all but cattle.   He treated us like a herd - he didn't really know our names, our personalities, or our feelings - just our roles.  Brother #1 and his wife seemed to do this, too - if some family members hurt you, then all family members were bad.  To my brother, "family" means his kids - and when his wife was dying, they circled the wagons and didn't let anyone else in.  I understand that - it's a frightening, very intimate and extremely personal event!  But it's still weird to be clumped together with WWW and her Flying Monkeys in someone's eyes...  Especially since I've worked for years at having a relationship with Brother #1 - We've visited them, invited them to our place (they never came- red flag #1), had Thanksgiving together.  I've called and emailed them (almost all connections were initiated by me - second red flag), and last year two other sisters and I went to help for a couple of weeks each when K was going through treatments.  Since then, I've emailed and SKYPEd and shared my life.  Brother #1 asked me to do the communication with the family after the last surgery - basically, I'd badger him until he sent me something and then I sent it on to other family members.  Without thanks, but ACON's work for nothing, right??? (Red flag #3)  And then one day his daughter wrote and said that she was taking the communication burden over for her dad and she'd be sending me stuff - I wrote back and said that another layer might be a bit much and gave her all the emails so that she could send stuff out directly.  And I haven't heard from Brother #1 since.  Nada.  Nil.  Zilch.  (Red flag #4).  Now, you say, he's been dealing with a lot right now - his wife has been dying!  And that's true - but a 3-minute call to say, "I'm having my daughter take this over because we're living in the same house and it's easier - thanks for all you've done." doesn't seem that hard.  But apparently it is.  It seems that death in this family always brings something to a head - I've been really pondering lately how often I'm involved in one-sided relationships - I'm the only one working on them!  (And I've  also figured out that if you have to 'work" at a relationship, you might want to just take a good hard look at that thing and see if it's worth a lot of trouble...)  I think I'm finally done with "relationships" that are one-sided - by rights, they shouldn't be called relationships - they should be called something like "meships" or "youships" or "Nships" - because they're not about relating.  So - is it my brother's fault that I do this?  Absolutely not! It's all me - he apparently isn't interested but I've kept at it, just knowing that if I keep at it long enough, a relationship will emerge!!!!  Like a beautiful butterfly!  Such absolute shit!  I've got to stop it, stop it, stop it.  Enough.  I am wasting my wonderful self - pearls before swine and all that.  Pearl - I was almost named that as a baby - I'm thankful that I wasn't, but I might just take it as a pet name for my new self - Pearl -an irritant that over time is covered in a lustrous coating and becomes a gem!