Family Knots ©

I have been fighting with what post I want to write.
I do that a lot, fight with myself, maybe that’s why I always end up loosing so often HA HA HA
Ok let me flip a coin.
Hmmm

The other day my mother asked me if I could drive her tot ht e hospital to keep my aunt company as she was going in to have a blood transfusion to help strengthen her because she has been on chemo for the last three months and radiation before that.
I won’t go into more detail of her ailment but they said it would take over six hours and my mother wanted to keep her company.
She is my mother’s SIL and have known each other since they were kids.
We are all about family and when one of us is in trouble it’s not unusual to see and army descend to help.

Last month I lost another uncle, someone who spent most of his healthy yeas helping not only family but also his neighbours and the community.
If someone was broke and had nothing to eat all they had to do is stop by his grocery store and walk home with a couple of bags of food.
He gave to the church and various charities but he wasn’t rich in money, he made enough to keep his family from needing anything and securing a future for them.

That all stopped when he had a stroke and a couple of years later, then diabetes set in and ate away or deformed his body into someone we didn’t recognize.
I saw him at a picnic a couple of years ago, the first time in a decade since any of us had ever seen him And was shocked at his appearance as were many people.
He legs had been cut off, arms and hands twisted into grotesque branches and his teeth were rotting away.

I thought to myself when I saw him that I would rather be dead.
I have never been so wrong with that statement.
When he say all the people, people he grew up with.
People he knew from birth, his face lit up like a candle and was vibrating in the wheelchair like a supercharged rabbit as everyone rushed to hug and kiss him.
His wife who had for the last twenty years of her life been the only one to care for him was so happy to see him like that she was floating around the park like a sixteen year old on her first date.
It did my heart good to take him in my arms and tell him how good it was to see him.

At his funeral I heard one of my uncles say he was now whole again in heaven.
I told my uncle that he was more whole in the state he was in than many of us ever were.
The police had to close off the street and an estimate 3000 people crowded into the church then followed the coffin to the cemetery.
People seeing the procession would think someone very important had died and they would have been right, someone important did pass away, someone who cared.

Five funerals in as many months that my parents have gone to and my sick aunt has been there in her condition.
I can’t imagine what is going through her head with all this dieing going on and her fighting to stay alive.
My parents are either there or on the phone daily since all of this started with her as have two of her kids by taking time off from work regularly to take her to her numerous appointments.
This is what kids do for her parents and they took care of us when we were young.
I said two of her kids, she has three; it’s the third on who is the focus of this post today.

Her third son is a bonafide asshole.
As we were sitting the other day having lunch my father’s brother called and told us how her son was sitting at the coffee shop telling everyone that his mother was going to kick the bucket next.
His mother is far from gone and in fact, she is looking a lot better today that she ever did.
He has not gone to see her in the hospital when she is there and when he stops by the house he only goes there to eat all the food they have in the fridge and to see if they are still alive.

Three months ago I brought my steam cleaner to their house to clean their couch and chair and their oldest son, asshole was there.
They asked him to stay and help me but he said he was busy; there was soccer game at the tavern and left to go watch it.
I didn’t need his help anyway.

He is the weirdest person I have ever met.
No one lies more than him that I know of.
He helps anyone other than his family.
He works hard and spends his money on drugs and gambling.
Usually he is broke 5 minutes after he gets paid.

The other day he got into a fight with his parents when he said that they have never done anything for him.
Huh?
These are not rich people but they paid for his two wedding, which ended up in divorces leaving three kids without a father because he just walked away.
He never paid child support even though he could more than afford it but rather waste it all on a horse named “Dead At The Gate”.

He showed up one day and asked me if I could make a glass pipe for him so he c ould smoke his crack.
I told him to go to the clinic and get a free one.
He said only the junkies go there.
I told him that he should feel at home then among the others like him.

When he was diagnosed with cancer and had to go through 4 surgeries to stay alive, his mother was there every day but now when she is in need, he only shows up to aggravate her and make her sicker than she was.
I don’t know where people like him come from or how they come to be on this earth.
I could understand if he was abused but he wasn’t.
Do you know he only started doing drugs in his forties?
We were sitting one day playing poker smoking a joint and he walked in and preceded to tell us that only welfare cases smoked pot, real drug users did crack.
I wanted to crack him in the face but threw him out instead.

He believes his parents owe him.
I think they do to.
They owe him a whack in the head with a baseball bat.
I guess there are selfish bastards like this in every family.
One of my mother’s brothers was like this.
They found him shot to bits in the woods a couple of years ago and the town threw a party.

I am happy my aunt has a daughter and another son who care about them as do the rest of my family but for one asshole.
Sometimes it pays to live in the backwoods where the deer and antelope dance to the sounds of banjos and shotguns singin the blues.

There is a Greek saying that if you have children, in your later years one will bring you a glass of water.

It's a good thing my aunt had three because if she only had one, she'd be parched now.

Have a nice day

Walker