Bitter vs. Better

First off, I would like to extend my thanks to all of you who have shown such an immense amount of support for me lately! In addition to the comments you all can see, I also got several e-mails, voicemails, instant messages, phone calls, text messages, and other displays of condolence and support. They were all immensely appreciated.

Several of you have noted that the last entry that I posted touched you, or in fact, made you cry. I am so very glad that you felt touched, and that some of you even felt moved to tears as you read. If nothing else it makes me feel like, by telling my version of the story, grandma can go on touching lives even after her life has ended. (It also makes me feel better about all my tears, considering you all have known about her for a matter of weeks, and I've known her and loved her for damn near 23 wonderful years.) Never in my life have I been so grateful for having such wonderful friends in addition to the closeness of my family.

I actually felt that some of those friends were actually more welcome than certain members of the family...

Generally speaking, I'm not one to gossip. I don't spread rumors that I hear, and I know how to keep a secret. But since there are only a few family members who actually know about this site, I'm going to go ahead and vent my feelings about certain people in my family. Last Saturday, shortly after grandma left us, I got a phone call from Kirsten. (We all know that I love Kirsten like a sister, and that love is certainly reciprocated, so while she wasn't initially calling about grandma -because she didn't know about grandma,- but she quickly stepped up and did all she could to console me,) during this phone call, she said something that really kind of captured the situation perfectly. She said, "In times like these, when everyone is faced with a certain unpleasantness, there are two kinds of people. There are those who let it make them bitter, and those who let it make them better." -- I'm venting about the bitter ones.

First there was Aunt M. - initials will be used for the sake of their saving face... Because lord knows I'm not about to portray these people in a flattering light, - Aunt M. has ALWAYS behaved in a shockingly self-serving manner for pretty much as long as I can remember... This event was no different. (A little back-story here) When grandma was initially diagnosed and surgery was deemed necessary, Aunt M. feigned concern, this concern was of course delicately blended with comments about her own assorted illnesses and ailments. (She was really doing an over-the-top acting job... Apparently nobody told her that someone would need to film it in order for her to be considered for the Academy Award.) So she cried and moaned, and wailed, and then pleaded poverty until my grandfather (who was stretching every dollar to afford grandma's medical bills) sent her money to pay for a ticket. Please note that this means that she didn't pay for a ticket herself. Now... before she came up, my mother and other aunts advised her that she would have to actively contribute to the care of grandma, because none of them could waste their time caring for Aunt M. while trying to care for grandma... Basically, they told her, "you're welcome to be here, but you have to help... if you can't help, DON'T COME!" Well, Aunt M. came up... and did she help? NOPE. She was a constant drain on patience, time, effort, and resources. Basically, you need to think of every possible way to be an additional burden to people who already have a heap on their plates, and multiply it times 8. Now, it's no secret among the sisters that grandpa paid for Aunt M's plane ticket, so when M. starts talking about having steaks from Kansas regularly delivered to her home, packed in dry ice, people are starting to wonder. Couple that with the fact that she was too ill to visit grandma as she lay in the hospital (during early phases of her care) but she was well enough to go to a local jewelry store to try on a few new things... (basically indicating that someone could've afforded their own plane ticket.) M. drained everyone of all their patience, and most of their resources for about a week, (which, by all accounts, was about 6 days and 22 hours more than anyone could take). And at the end of grandma's life, and the end of this saga, do you think she behaved any better? NOPE. She begged and pleaded for 4 plane tickets to fly up her whole family for the services (fortunately, prior to losing the ability to communicate, grandma had EXPRESSLY noted that if ANY plane tickets were sent it was to be ONE and ONLY ONE.) Aunt M. didn't react too kindly to this, so she decided that since she couldn't bring everyone with her at grandpa's expense, she'd skip grandma's funeral altogether. The single ticket was offered again, to which she replied, "No, my daughter has homecoming coming up, so we're going to go shopping for a dress." (Yeah, that's right, the crazy bitch missed her own mother's funeral to go dress shopping.) Did she even send flowers? NOPE.

The thing of it is, as my mother pointed out, if she had been here she would've wailed and pissed and moaned, and made everyone else miserable, because she's the type of person who would've grabbed grandma's hand at the last minute just so that she would be able to say "Oh, I held her hand as she died" for the purposes of her own story, not because she really cared enough to hold her hand at that point as a means of comfort to grandma. (I am proud of the fact that I got to be there for her final days at all, let alone hold her hand through much of it.)

The other family members are really a drop in the bucket next to M, but let's go ahead and address them anyway, since we're on the subject. (Events like this give me sooooo much to write about.) The three family members in question as a whole shall be referred to as the western contingent... We'll call them great aunt S, cousin T, and in-law A. (*In-law A. was by all rights an innocent party who was accidentally dragged into this mess, and for the most part, she did her best contribute when possible.) S. and T. on the other hand... Well, they succeeded in pissing people off too. For starters, cousin T is a vegetarian. This ordinarily wouldn't be a big deal, however, T repeatedly made it abundantly clear that he wouldn't eat meat at all, so we needed to find other ways to accommodate his dietary needs... and then he ate bacon at breakfast. (And chicken for dinner one night.) Kinda makes me wonder what kind of vegetarianism this is, and why we all bent over backwards to order vegetarian pizza and such. (Bitch comes to my house, he's eating a can of green beans from the cupboard - while the rest of us eat ham, or turkey, or something - or he goes to bed hungry.) His mother, my great aunt S, (my grandmother's sister) who technically did have every right to be there was a constant irritation to everyone. S was actually only planning on coming to town for a high school reunion, but ended up making it to the funeral too. Basically, she felt that everyone should wait on her, hand and foot. Too bad that most of the time the rest of us disagreed with her on that matter. This obnoxious behavior extended to the point of sitting at the breakfast table the morning after my grandmother died, and LITERALLY yelling "BACON!!! BACON!!!" until someone brought the bacon in from the breakfast room for her... She did this REPEATEDLY. She also had other assorted demands throughout the week, and of course any time that anyone did something for her, (despite the fact that she has full use of all her faculties, and could've done any and all of it herself,) it wasn't good enough, or it had to be done differently, or some other there was some other nonsensical problem, like her ice water wasn't cold enough, she demanded others get up to accommodate her... Really considerate gal. This general irritation would've been tolerated, however there was a blatant disregard for the occasion when she demanded to see my newly-deceased grandmother's ring at the funeral home showing. She demanded to see it because she insisted that my grandmother had gotten the largest diamond (of three diamonds that were inherited from another relative). She also prodded another relative (the one who got the third diamond of the set) into a comparison at the funeral home... Tasteless and rude if you ask me. (And in case you're wondering, it was easily proven that while still substantial in size, my grandmother, in fact, got the SMALLEST of the 3, not the largest... So not only was she tacky, she was WRONG.)

Now that I really think about it, it's kind of like those soldiers casting lots for Jesus' robe at the crucifixion... Before anyone was even buried they already want to put their two cents in so they don't get feel like they were getting shorted! (I'm Catholic, so I can kinda get away with likening this to something biblical!)

So those are the ones who let bitterness win... I choose to be one who is made better by these events. I forgive these people for behaving as they did. Their behavior might not make sense to me, but I'm sure they all have their reasons. I got more out of this whole series of events than I ever could've hoped for... and considering I didn't lose it when any of this mess went down, I think I have already set out on the road to betterment. If not better, maybe just a little softer, a little more tolerant, or a little more understanding.