The Announcement

Today on Facebook, my niece Julie in Belgium posted the anniversary of her mother's death in 2005 at age 44. Goedele was my sister. She was four years younger than me. Due to excruciatingly bizarre and complex family circumstances, my mother and I became strangers to each other , and because my mother and sister were very close, in turn, Goedele and I became very estranged by the time of her death. My mother made no efforts to try to repair that. So, it is an odd feeling seeing the announcement. The sense of detachment has not improved, nor the baffled and stunned emotion at my mother's strange behaviours. But thinking about my niece and her younger brother who were 8 and 5 when my sister died, softened my musings. No matter how well off you are, growing up without a mother must be very painful. But because of all the messed up family conflicts I chose to send Julie a personal message rather than engage in the easily treacherous waters of leaving a notification. It is a hard reality to try to come to terms with, that when the dominoes start to fall in a family, they tend to fall for quite some time, long after the offending parties have left the scene or died. My niece is a beautiful and smart girl at 16, well liked and loved by her family and friends, and that is a huge relief for me. She looks so much like my sister did at the same age, it is quite uncanny. Both my parents died in 2008, within 5 months of each other, and my youngest sister died by her own volition in 1998, and I have not seen since my brother since her death. So, there is no conversation with any one on this matter. My husband is a therapist, who listens to people all day,and had very little appetite for my thoughts or needs on the issue, so it stays mostly in my heart. But tonight my heart is longing for openness, and wishes I could be there for Julie and her pain, in a way that is mutually free from preconceived notions about each other. The sins of the fathers, so to speak, are the inheritance of the next generation. As I inherited the disgust with the intrigue and deceit and manipulations, so did Julie have an inheritance with her mother's death. Hers is the inheritance of grief, of an emptiness and a longing that cannot be filled and the life long brave attempt to come to terms with that. Fortunately for her and her brother, she has a supportive and loving family and many a good friend. That will make all the difference.