How to write about family, warts and all, without sounding - bitter, hostile, selfish, or worse - fake? These are all the lesser traits that come from being immersed from birth in a cauldron of emotion sharing DNA and toilet paper ? Yesterday I wept at a memorial for a cousin, a twin - survived by two sons a twin sister, nephew and younger brother. Their parents had died within years of each other far too early in their children's barely formed young lives, and I drifted away. Our "extended" family for these orphans was of little help, so 30 years later I sat mute at my deceased cousins' memorial, next to my mother and oldest brother, I am estranged to them. I doubt that I alone am in this modern maze of who, what or where are the remnants of childhood. The people I describe are not evil, nor without many redeeming qualities; so why is it that we as a species have become so impoverished in our ability to effectively provide the most fundamental human emotion of compassion for loved ones - and just who are "loved ones?"
The memorial service was in a Church, one of the "well-funded" mega-salvation centers that has come to characterize the business-end of today's spirituality, and I felt a benign appreciation for the comfort it surely must have provided to my cousins who had suffered too much too early. If I had different parents, I too might have found solace and family after mine own moved without forwarding address - kidding, sort of. I exaggerate, and maybe unfairly, for without my family's influence and memory, I'd have little reason to write this, to grow, or search for ways to improve the world, and redeem myself - all traits and ambitions I acquired within that cauldron of DNA and toilet paper. How does something so formative and nurturing de-rail? Where is it that jostling for the last scoop of peanut butter becomes lethal as Bob Dylan sings about brothers in Tempest - "they fought and slaughtered each other in a deadly dance." More importantly, how do we get back to the love and nurturing whose echoes and mirages seem to inspire so many dead-ends in human spiritual evolution?
It won't be from muting our expressions - "the homicidal bitchin' that goes down in every kitchen" Leonard Cohen sings about, for each must be heard. In the case of parent and child, that person who grows up in front of another will never be right with the inequity of the relationship until the child can know and understand at some level the suffering of a parent; nor will a parent ever accept that their child is grown until there is nothing more to show that child, or that child is busy bolstering the crumbling edifice of the loved parent. Are siblings different ? those people who acquired the visceral knowledge of surprise, delight, betrayal from watching or evoking your gasps. Siblings or no, we learn of human response at the fountain of family knowledge - there is no superior anything, ranking is an illusion driven by the myth that any differences within a family are greater than marginal attenuations of the same chord. Whether you speak, shout or lack communication of any sort with your family , fact - we "know" more about them, and they us, than is comfortable, especially if one has survived the modern age by shutting down self-awareness - cutting oneself off from those dicey aspects of self that are less than appealing, or intolerable within some circles of society - lust, aggression, cruelty, cowardice. I mean how do you act when a sibling you know to have a cruel streak a mile wide turns all mealy-mouthed and friendly to old people and children - you want to shout, "run for your lives - you're gonna get creamed !" - right ?
Kidding, but what if this cruel family member becomes unrelenting and destructive toward you? Remember you're cut from the same cloth with the same "super powers", and just maybe you have found your own cruelty to be a defect - a useless inclination while the sibling, or siblings are so keyed to your perceived powers they battle a mirage? What can you do, stick around, fight back, what? It seems to be all about filling in the empty places using battles, food, drugs even substitute families. How many of us have gone in search of a replacement parent because ours is no longer available - replacement siblings, re-creation of a home long abandoned ? It's not a trick question; to my thinking there is no substitute for that magic of family, or - and this is important - what if all the world is our home and each other human is some shade of a family member remembered ? That means that if there was an interruption between you and your older brother - an unresolved conflict like a suppurating wound oozing pus and infection, then older peers in your world may unknowingly cause discomfort. However, what if these avatars of family became part of a personal quest for growth; a path toward equilibrium and balance? What if as an individual you have come to the belief that there is no wound that cannot be resolved, either through death or recuperation - that our existence more closely resembles the world around us with its constant circle of life - decay and rebirth? If it is the latter, you begin to see each human interaction as a page in your lesson book of the human family.
Whether you grew up in Foster Care, or your Mama was June Cleaver - the idea that your blood relatives are significantly more than a rehearsal for the countless performances making up a single lifetime is arguable; what is undeniable is that any effort made to understand a difficult family member; understand what a sibling is never having had one, or imagine what your parents want, or wanted - you will be a better person for it. My cousin Caron who through circumstance and happenstance was torn from my life years ago and has now taken refuge in the great eternal leaving much more than a grieving family, she has allowed me to view my own existence with more loving eyes than before I essayed my thoughts on family. Now I am grateful that a woman I knew as a child could touch me years later such that my feelings have become more recognizable. Now rather than sorrow, I feel fortunate to have been some shade in the world she lived - a memory of some kind, even if it was only as a source of discomfort that promoted the human instinct toward wellness. If there is a compassionate consciousness capable of transcendence, my hope is for Caron to know peace and for her family to hear her echoes of love evermore .
