I have on & off been struggling with resentment towards my sister and her two sons ... both grown ... none of whom attended Mom's funeral ... or sent flowers ... or even a card, except for a brief card from my sister.
But after thinking about it I really have to remember I think two things:
1. If I were in my nephews shoes, how would I feel about these things? For one thing, I don't know their situation at all; for another, I know that when I was a teen or post-teen ... I think one nephew is 18, the other is about 21 ... a grandparent's death would have seemed a misfortune, to be sure, but not one that should disturb my routine for the day. That's simply the truth. God help me, I don't think of things like this at all today. But I was young once, and lived a long way away from grandparents, and when my two grandfathers died (grandmothers had died long, long before) ... that was really my attitude.
2. We are a nuclear family and that really truly does have consequences. I think my attitude back when I was a teen and post-teen reflected the whole nuclear worldview: this is our family right here, right now; distant relatives are distant relatives, and that includes physically distant grandparents.
I know I'm being harsh on the Nuclear Family arrangement. But I'll admit that from my experience over the past few months, the whole vision involved in the Nuclear Family is one that feels further and further from my sympathy. And I have no doubt that Extended Families have plenty of problems of their own, they sure look appealing from where I sit at the moment.
Sure, maybe this is another of those Grass Is Greener on the Other Side things.
On the other hand ... looking back ... my maternal grandparents made certain decisions, in the late 1930s and early 1940s ... involving in effect switching from the Extended Family experience they had had in Hornersville, Missouri; and instead embracing the Nuclear Family option. There was a very concrete, very strong incentive to do so: the Depression.
From what my Mom and her sister said, they were both sent away from Hornersville for education for a better economic future that would necessarily be someplace other than the ancestral home of Hornersville.
So Mom was sent to Draughon's Business College in Paducah, Kentucky, in the late 1930s. After graduating, she had a brief stint at a second hand store in Hornersville, but with the encouragement of her parents, she took a job in Jefferson City, Missouri, and never lived continuously back in Hornersville again. Likewise her sister was trained as a nurse in Memphis, TN, took a job in Arkansas, and again, was for the most part living away from Hornersville for her future.
And seriously who can fault my Grampa and Grandma. They wanted the best for their children. And the Depression was a harsh taskmaster driving everyone in those days. I'm told that many of the sons and daughters of Hornersville left to go to Michigan to seek work in the auto industry. And now I'm told that many come back to Hornersville to be buried. Whew. Economics may have driven many away, but historic amily connections may attract many back, too.
So putting a priority on economics was perhaps necessitated by "the times" and everyone in America was doing it: moving away, here and there, and everywhere ... and by definition your family ... your Nuclear Family ... came to be your family right here and now, the economic unit: parents and kids. And that's it.
But those old Extended Family feelings live on. My Mom adored her grandchildren. She was deeply, deeply hurt when her estranged daughter at first prohibited any contact; and later limited their contact very carefully. This wasn't in my Mom's understanding of how things work: Grandma and Grandkids are supposed to get to see each other more often and have lots of fun and so on. When this didn't happen ... well, in a way, to some extent, Mom tried to keep her end up anyway, and her photos and her giffts and her letters and her words to me tell me that to Mom, she was a Grandma in the very traditional sense of the word.
But in the Nuclear Family ... there's not quite the same place for Grandparents as in the past, ordinarily. And so Mom's affections and sheer vision of her Grandchildren was not reciprocated over time. Now ... they're there, in Tennessee; Mom was here in Oklahoma. I know before she and I moved back to Tulsa about 7 years ago, she pointed out that she didn't get to see her daughter and her children much anyway. The Nuclearization of our family was fairly complete even living in the same city in Tennessee.
Same for me, though. I mean, I've been looking at these photo albums, and there are Grandpa and Grandma doting on my and my sister when we were very, very young. But we lived with our parents in Tulsa, so they didn't get to see us all that much, and vice versa. And although me and my sister grew up with a genuine respect for our Grandparents, it was a distant respect. And I'm fairly sure didn't quite reciprocate their own feelings.
Switching from Extended to Nuclear Families has consequences. No wonder Nursing Homes are so popular in America. As an institution, the NH is a social and economic consequence of making families tight, nuclear, economic units. Members of such units should be functional, after all. And when an older member gets increasingly less functional ... we send them to Nursing Homes till they die.
Why didn't we do that with Mom. I wondered about this. True, I had promised Mom I'd never put her in a Nursing Home. But many, many make that promise and find satisfactory excuses to break it later. I went to an Alzheimer's Association meeting in which flyers were passed out basically trying to help people come up with good excuses for breaking The Promise.
I'm deeply, deeply grateful we didn't go that route. It was never an option from my angle. And I think it's because for better or worse, as posts early on this blog pointed out, my reading included things like Plato's Republic and The Aeneid and Plutarch and more, in which the older view of the Family as an Extended, Organic whole was embedded deeply in the whole worldview. I could no more "put Mom in a nursing home" than Aeneas could have pushed his aged father Anchises from his shoulders as they fled the fires of dying Troy ... together, even though from a strictly functional standpoint, dumping Anchises may have made more economic sense.
So, my Grandparents made certain decisions. So did my parents. All in the context of a social world conditioned by the Great Depression. The resulted of all this was me, like so many, born into a Nuclear Family. And when a Nuclear Family fails ... as so many do ... as all do, in a way, sooner or later, since Nuclear by definition doesn't Extend through time and is therefore very, very mortal ... well then, we die ... and die alone.
Now I am alone. God walks with me, but like so many ... for I'm not alone in being alone ... like Father Job ... we are Solus. I'm really an anachronism. All that Anchises on Aeneas' shoulders stuff. I was privileged ... and it was a privilege ... to bear my own aging Mom on my own shoulders as she declined and as she died. What a gift. But it's really an anachronistic gift, and not really consistent with the Nuclear Famly way of doing things. Which frankly is fine by me: there's something to be said for anachronism.
Solus. Consequence of our Nuclear Famly. Consequence of decisions made many years ago by my Grandparents doing what they thought best in the midst of a Depression.
And hey ... I still think they all ... *all* ... definitely including my Mom ... showed enormous Courage in taking the paths they did. They chose to make their decisions as best they could and go forward. That's what they did.
I love that movie Perfect Storm. There are so many circumstances that, if they had been slightly different, would have saved the doomed ship on its fatal run. There are decisions that could have been different and which would have saved the ship as well. But hey. They made the best decisions they could, and if they did the best they could according to their lights. And in the end, as the ship was going down, the Mark Wahlberg character cries out, minutes before his imminent death, "Hey, it was a hell of a run!"
Well, Mom ... your decisions, and your parent's decisions, have had enormous consequences for good and bad. But you did the best you could. And Hey: it was a hell of a run!
But ohhhhhh ... how I miss you so, Mom.
God bless you and keep you always, Mom.
Charles Delacroix
Feast of St Denis & Cos.
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