Family Ties - A Report From the Black Sheep

I had a dream last night. Its usual for the mind to create images and scenarios, (hell, mine does a whole coloured movie complete with kitties and huge killer robots) based on what one experienced during the day. Yesterday I was talking to my aunt who called a brother of hers that she had not spoken to in ten years. It was a great conversation. I live with my mother and aunt and they have another sister and three brothers in their family. Between them they had 10 children, my cousins. The cousins have 12 kid between them. Growing up I was never the one to spend much time with my family. I was the weird outsider. My family also moved away to places such as Western Europe and Alberta due to the fact that my father was a soldier. But the bulk of my mother’s side of the family lived close. Especially at the time when we were all kids growing up. For a time my cousins who I will call Lou and Maria lived right next story to us on the base in Shilo, Manitoba. My aunt who also lived next door, the same aunt that lives with us now was having marriage troubles with her husband so my cousin’s Lou and Maria were often at our place. My father in particular looked out for them. To me, my older cousin Lou was my GOD. I loved him like no boy could love an older brother. When we moved away to Europe for several years, My aunt and my cousins moved to a charming little house on a dead end street in Winnipeg Manitoba. The same house once occupied by another uncle and aunt. It was a narrow little place that had been converted into three separate living apartments. The main floor one was our family’s big city retreat. I remember a time when there must have been twenty of us, kids and adults, enjoying our company as families do. When our family returned my Europe we lived for a time in Manitoba so often got to see my mother’s side of the family. In fact my favourite cousin Lou got married during that time and it was also around that time that my cousin Maria, his sister, was killed in a car crash. My Dad was then transferred to Alberta and we separated from the family for the second time. During that time and before my cousin Lou was often found working for my various uncles. If not that then he had been taken under the wing of others. They all spent a good deal of time together and were in effect, a extended family. This was something distance kept me and my family from being a part of. Soon he moved out West with his wife Sally and started his own family - three children, two girls and then a boy. My sister lived with them for a time in Kelowna before she herself went to Australia and met her own husband and had her kids. My aunt (the one who lives with us now) went west too to be closer to her son and grandchildren. The grandchildren grew up and my cousin Lou started a nice business for himself and built a good life. When my father died a few years ago a large number of the relatives on my mother’s side of the family came to the funeral and to comfort both me and my mother. My cousin Lou was not one of them. Despite how easy it would have been to do so, he choose not to take the day or two it would have taken to honour a man who was often very good to him as a child. Not only that, but to see to me, his cousin, who loved him as a brother growing up but who had all but been abandoned by him after the teen years. Personally he is dead to me for that. After recent incidents in which my aunt, his mother, felt that she was not being treated right or appreciated by both my cousin Lou and his wife Sally, she came to spend some months with us. She had done this twice before and my mother was not hesitant to give her sister a place to live. Our family is just like that. I may have resented the fact since my aunt, love her as I do, is a true lioness, a ‘tell it like it is’ person and is unapologetically so. I can see how she would tend to aggravate at times but I have found that living with her this past year that she is really not bad at all when you get to understand her. I hate to admit that more times than not she is right about the things she says. AND the house does look better if you put your dishes and the butter away. So this brings me to the main point of my story. My cousin in BC is having a wedding for his oldest daughter this August. Her mother, my cousin-in-law Sally has really frozen my aunt, the grandmother, out of the process. There is even a ban on any relative staying at my cousin's house (a place that could easily accommodate the many elderly relatives crossing half the country to be there). My aunt especially is banned with the weak excuse being that her presence will somehow ‘upset the bride’. So my aunts and uncles and my mother will have to stay in nearby hotels if they want to celebrate this blessed weekend event. It will probably be one of the last times when all the relatives and their kids and their kid’s kids will be able to all get together in celebration. Its only for a weekend. Couldn’t my cousin’s wife have just ‘sucked it up’ for a moment of familial love and allowed everyone to bunk together. There is lots of room in the house not to mention outside where they have a motor home. Some relations would even pitch a tent just to be near the others and have a few days of old stories and backyard bbq fun. The old stories alone would be worth the price of admission and a gift to those of us who have grown up and know these people when they were younger. But especially for the third generation, including the bride and her sister and brother who have never heard some of the family ‘legends’. And if Sally doesn't think people like my aunt and mother would not do a ton of cooking and cleaning - thuse freeing Sally to do other wedding related things - then she is nuts. When we heard that ONE aunt was yes INDEED allowed to stay at the house during the weekend then it became clear that my cousin-in-law's edict to have NO ONE stay at her home was not as final as we were lead to believe. So what is the reason? All I can see is someone who is selfish and petty. Who freezes out loving relatives who were always there for her and especially her husband, the father of the bride. I see a grandmother (my aunt) who is hurt to not have the chance to have more of an impact of the wedding of her first grandchild, a person she spent a good number of years raising and caring for when the child was young. But the most hurtful thing is the loss of an opportunity. The loss of a family's chance to get together to laugh and celebrate a life spent together before many of them leave this earth. For that almost all of them would have made the journey across country but as it is now are only selectively attending the event. All of this because of one selfish person who forgets where she came from and who is using this event to punish past wrongs. Now as a final small note. As the black sheep of the family (its true…I am sheered every year and from my silky coat the finest sweaters for alpine ski instructors are made) I was not even invited. Before all the pettiness I would have considered crashing the event just to see the great show and great time my relatives are famous for. As it is now. I am relishing the week to myself and this opportunity to vent.