Perspective 101

Two weeks ago my boss’ parents were killed in a car accident. One of my co-workers said, “It really puts things in perspective, doesn’t it?” and it really did, but not in the way she meant it. It made me start thinking about my own family and how screwed up some of their perspectives are.

Almost a year ago to date, my Grandma made the decision to move into an assisted living home.  I brought up the idea to her after she had been in and out of the hospital for problems with her pancreas. She was 91 and while I was starting to get worried about her living alone, she just wanted her cooking and cleaning done for her. A friend of mine warned me that this would cause problems in the family, and I thought “nah, that would be silly to cause problems over this, this is what she wants to do.” Man oh, man was I wrong.

One night in the midst of us researching and visiting communities, I log onto Facebook to find a post to my wall from my cousin’s wife. Not a private message, but a wall post for everyone to see telling me that I wasn’t doing the right research, I wasn’t looking into the horror stories of these places, I was being selfish and on and on and on. Keep in mind; I hadn’t even spoken with either of them for them to know what kind of research I was even doing. So anyway, I asked them to please stop airing our dirty laundry on my Facebook wall and that’s when the private messages started. It was pretty much them accusing me of forcing her to go into this home and that I was acting out of selfishness, that this should have been a family decision; apparently she can’t do this on her own. They pretty much just raked me over the coals. Then my cousin joins the mix, and being the level headed person she is, proceeds to tell me how stupid I am, how much she hates me and always has, I’m no longer her family. You know, stuff a normal right minded person usually says. When my Grandma confronted her about this, she screamed at her and my Grandma hung up on her. She then told me that because of me, she would never speak to my Grandma ever again.

Then there is my Aunt. She didn’t really like the idea of my Grandma going into one of those places, but was ok with it because it was what my Grandma wanted, until she found out one detail she never knew about. I was left the house in the will. Originally it was supposed to be split three ways between my Mom, Myself and my Aunt. My Grandma had decided she wanted me to have it and changed the will. My Aunt, as level headed as her daughter, threw a fit and has yet to speak to my Grandma. This is where the perspective part comes in. Here my Cousin and my Aunt have their Mom and Grandma, right here. One single phone call away. One medium length car ride away, and what do they do? They disown her. The one woman who has taken care of both of them their whole lives, shunned. Over what? A house. They are willing to give her up all for a house, while I would give up that house in a heartbeat if it meant I got to keep her. Here my boss would probably give anything to say goodbye to her parents, see them one last time, have them be just a phone call away, a medium length plane ride away, but these people are more concerned with what they are getting than who the person is they’re getting it from. The woman is not even dead yet, and they are arguing over inheritance. My Cousin and her wife were so concerned about my Grandma’s welfare with going into one of these places, where are they now? Have they called to see if she’s happy, to see how many friends she’s made. Nothing.

This is a woman who had my cousin live with us every summer until she was 17, took her camping, bought her clothes, paid for her braces, put her through 12 years of private school, has always stood up for my cousin and had her back, she has accepted everything about my cousin’s lifestyle and has never judged her . For shame Nana!! How could you be such a horrible person!! When my cousin left her husband in the middle of the night and drove from Denver with a four month old baby and you offered up your home to her?? Despicable!!! When she got hooked on drugs and stole almost $2000 from you to pay your phone bill that she ran up $2000 and you forgave her?? You bitch!! Apparently doing all these things makes her totally deserving of this treatment. Geez, apparently I’m the crazy one.

This is really no shocker coming from my Aunt though. Once she found this dog and gave it to us, but it didn’t get along with our dog so we needed to give it back. We brought it over to her house while she was at work, and I asked her if we should leave it in the back yard, and she told me no (because technically she stole it from her neighbor and she was afraid they would see her back there), that I had to leave it in the house. So I did. When my Grandma and I got home there was a lovely message on our answering machine from my Aunt. Apparently I was supposed to lock the dog in the bathroom, but since no one informed me of this, I had no idea. She was really angry and said that the dog had chewed on her couch because I did not lock it up. There was some other stuff she said too, if I could just remember what it was. Oh, right, how could I forget, she also said that I was a selfish bitch, and that if I died tomorrow, she didn’t give a shit. This is my family, you’re a little jealous, I can tell.

It just really blows my mind the amount of parents out there who are basically abandoned. They sit in rest homes, in their living rooms, and in hospital beds, waiting for someone, their own children, to come visit them. My Grandma criticizes me sometimes about the fact that I’m unsure if I ever want children. She says “Brett, who will take care of you when you’re old?” The first thought that comes to my mind is “Is that the reason you have children? A guaranteed care taker?” Apparently not these days. Old people seem to be a burden on their children more and more. They say, “I don’t have the patience”. Really? Because as a child, you didn’t wear on your parents’ patience at all, right? Trust me, I guarantee that you were no walk in the park as a child. Not only did your mother have to lug you around in her body for 9 months, causing her god knows what kind of discomfort, you ruined her body, and who knows what other body parts. I’m sure they have had your bodily fluids on them more times than they would like to remember. You threw tantrums, you cried all night, you wouldn’t eat your dinner, you did badly in school, you probably broke some rules and some laws, and you were a teenager. You were not a gem dropped down by the hands of God, on a cloud of silk, sprinkled with glitter and pooping diamonds. You were a pain in the ass and I guarantee they had the phone number for the local adoption agency in their hand, ready to dial, more than once.

Parents usually take care of their kids for about 18 years, and most of the time they don’t stop, even after their kids are grown. I just feel that I couldn’t do enough to repay what they’ve done for me. I don’t do what I do with an expectation of what I will get from them later on. I do it because they did it for me for 18 years (this is where my Grandma would clear her throat and say “18 years? More like 33 years darling"), and especially in my situation, after they were done raising kids, ready to retire, and didn’t have to, but chose to, and never once complained. Well maybe once or twice. I too, was a pain in the ass. So I wonder how these people would they feel if when they were a child and their parents just pushed them aside because they didn’t have the patience, or they were too busy and it was just too much of burden, or just too much for them to handle. Those people would probably be crying to a therapist right about now complaining how they are all screwed up because their parents just didn’t love them. How do they think their parents feel when they do that to them?

So now my Aunt is in a hospital bed, and they say it’s serious. She once said she didn’t give a shit if I died, should I now give a shit that she might die? Does it make me a hypocrite if I don’t? When I found out, I felt nothing. I still feel nothing. I find it hard to feel anything about someone who could treat the person who is EVERYTHING to me, like nothing. YOU are nothing, YOU have nothing inside you, and YOU have nothing to offer anyone. I don’t wish anything bad to happen, but am I worried, am I upset, have I shed one single tear for you? No, I feel nothing. Family or not, I can forget you ever existed. Unlike me, if you come running back, Nana would take you back, she doesn’t hold grudges. Me, I can hold a grudge like a damn world champion. I will tell you right now, I will never break for you. You are like a gnat shitting on my shoulder, it doesn’t exist to me. One day when you wake up and she’s gone, I hope you regret every single day you gave up with her. I hope you lose sleep at night wishing you could have made it right with her. I hope it eats you alive knowing how much you fucked up. While you do all this, I will go to bed every night knowing that I tried and may not have succeeded like I wanted to, but still tried to repay her for everything she has done for me. I will rest easy and be happy that every memory I have will be a good one. I will go to bed with no regrets because I didn’t let selfishness and greed take over. I can’t think of anything that my Grandma could do that would be so awful that I could do what you did. Especially after everything she has done for me.

So, after trimming the ugly fat of my family, and still having the good meat of it left, being the lucky girl I am, I got an extra serving of family with four little scoops of ice cream on the side. Like clockwork, not too long after this incident, I reconnected with my other Aunt and two cousins. I now have an amazing Aunt, 4 of the most awesome cousins, and 4 of the sweetest, cutest, and most polite little cousins a girl could ask for. Someone did me a favor and removed the most selfish, unloving people I have ever met, and replaced them with the most un-selfish, loving people I have ever met (besides myself…obviously).

I feel like there should be a moral of the story here. Moral is not a prominent word in my vocabulary, but I’ll give it a shot. Take care of the ones that took care of you. Don’t sweat the petty stuff and don’t pet the sweaty stuff. What you take for granted as always being there, might be gone in a heartbeat, make sure every day, the people you care about, know it. Don’t be greedy or selfish. Remember that things are just that, things. In the end, they hold no value. Lastly, take it easy….and if it’s easy, take it twice.