Estranged Grief

I have attempted to find the source theories behind the "Therapy Funeral" I held in August, 1977, a bit northeast of the hotel room I currently sit in. Those were pre-www theories and the books have long scattered on the psychobabble editing floors. I havenae found anything solid enough to resonate within the alphabet soup my damaged memory has made of my 4 decades of pro therapy. Despite my apethetic inability to confirm the book and pro names/titles, I trust the memory that I really did receive pro therapy guidance through a "Therapy Funeral." I believe the yaddahs of the blahs are obscured by the rapid-cycling nature of contemporary psychology more than personal psychosis. I only believe. Check facts before publication.

I nearly titled this journal entry as, "Orphan's Grief," but I am not a real orphan. Physical and foster care orphans have a much different set of challenges to process. My blood family is still "out there." I even know how to get the addresses and phone numbers. Just don't see the point. I still donae believe I can look to any of my family members for support of any sort. Visits, sure, but purely social. The cracks and fissures of family dysfunction show quickly when we allow it to get personal. Again, that dream from long ago floats through my mind where a disembodied voice from a Cecil B. DeMille style sky tells me, "Parting the Red Sea was child's play next to parting the bloody fields between estranged family members."

My mother's birth family is headquartered not too far from here. My husband has even attended one family reunion there. As expected, the sheer numbers blew him away. My blood family is HUGE, on both sides of the family tree, by any measure I know of, anywhere in the 21st century world. My father's family seems to have evaporated like a summer shower on a sun baked roof. Despite the quantity, hubs was impressed with the prosperous manners of my mother's family. He, naturally enough, wasnae tuned in to the subtler digs of my mother's family disgrace. Different words are in fashion now, but they are still appalled that she insulted their proud German blood line by marrying Irish. The words of that insult made more sense in the agricultural communities of the 40's than it does in 21st century US vernacular. The insult remains. You won't get a straight answer if you ask my in-laws, either, but it feels like the same insult to me, despite the educated political correctness. The eldest brother who committed suicide in 1982 is buried in my mother's family cemetary. I didnae ask how a suicide victim came to be interred in consecrated ground when they offered me directions to his grave. Nor did I visit the family cemetary. I think my desperate flight from all that family fun might have been where the Widow's Walk at Fort Defiance State Park became my official family grieving spot. I didn't know it then. I just needed a spot to cry. It is dangerous to cry with enthusiasm at interstate highway speeds.

My eldest big brother fits the male rape victim profile on just about every level I am aware of. Abuser bashing appropriate. His efforts to find inner peace defeated just about every religion, published or unpublished, on the planet. His mad swings between rage and dogmatic serenity were . . . insert words of preference here. I never doubted he would kill someone one day. I am proud of him that he only took one life: his own. Even that life, he took peacefully by simply taking a nap under a running vehicle's tail pipe. The daughter he "saved" with his suicide grew up to be a spiritually beautiful woman who is starved for family connection. She found me on Facebook shortly before my father died. I took her, her eldest child and her husband to meet the rest of the family at my father's quasi-funeral. It was the first time they had ever seen an ocean. The Atlantic. Their gratitude was genuinely gratifying. She is the one who "makes" me feel guilty for being so close without letting them know I am here. She and her beautiful family are the ones who tempt me to drive further north to say hey. She even loves the tragic hulk her mother has aged in to.

The younger of my two older brothers often looked to me for protection when we were children. He didnae have anywhere near my physical strength, speed nor my warrior nature. He was small enough to look at home in Asia or South America. Violence? You need physical strength and/or weapons for effective violence, don't you? Our shared big brother was a physically BIG man from a very young age. So was the predatory big sister who was born between my two older brothers. Abandoning him when I chose the family tradition of estrangement is a big part of my survivor's guilt. He was small and skinny to the day he died. Not healthy thin. Malnutrition, poor early development, rotten-toothed skinny. I don't believe Big Brother felt I needed to be forgiven for walking away from all that. He tried but he couldn't do it. The imaginary big brother who sits with me now has been continually assuring me that I did the best I could with what I had to work with. The guilt still niggles. Self-forgiveness is much harder than forgiving others in the yaddahs of my strictly personal blahs.

Formalizing a grieving ritual feels downright silly to my wandering senses, but. . . Will it be a leap of faith or a manifestation of delusion I am taking as I cross the river to the Widow's Walk at Fort Defiance State park this morning?

Prayers in progress.