We are the Shattered Pieces of a Family

See this picture? I believe this is my grandmother's family, taken back when she was a little girl. My purpose in showing it is to illustrate how families used to get together, to live, to laugh, to love and yeah, to even get their picture made together. I can remember going to my grandma and grandpa's house sometimes for family get togethers. My two aunts and their families would be there, my two uncles and their families would make it whenever they could. (My Uncle Wally - some of ya'll might know him better as Aunt Sandi's husband - was in the Navy so sometimes he was stationed too far afield to come for these visits and I really have no idea what my Uncle Mac was doing during those times. Sometimes we saw him, sometimes we didn't.) Anyway, the point is, these were wonderful times for me. All these relatives running around, all these cousins, all that laughter and fun...gosh, I miss that. I can remember when someone was ill, everybody who was able to would get involved. When my aunt had surgery, my mom traveled to Mobile, Alabama from Del City, Oklahoma to be with her. When Uncle Wally and Aunt Sandi came home to Selma, Alabama for a visit before they shipped off to England, we all converged on Selma to say good-bye to them. When my grandpa was baptized sometime in the '70's, everyone in the family who could come to witness it, did. We were a close family. And it was something special, at least from the viewpoint of a child (namely me and my sister). But then, in late 1979, the family started to fracture. My parents got divorced. Having been married for 18 years, it was hard for the rest of the family to "divorce" my dad, though. My aunts still thought of him as their "brother", my grandparents still thought of him as their "son". Dad and Uncle Wally had been buddies way back in the day, too, so I know it was hard for either of them to accept the end of a relationship. I look back now and wonder if that may have been the beginning of the end for all of us as a family. It's not that my parents' divorce was the first our family had experienced. And maybe I just perceive that event as having more of an impact on our family as a whole than it actually did. After all, it was my parents who split from one another, therefore maybe I'm giving it more "weight" than it really had as far as how it affected everyone else. But, regardless...the '80's brought even more turmoil to our family. Another aunt divorced her husband and it was quite similar to my parents situation in that she and her husband had been married for something like 20 years. He was as much my uncle as she was my aunt because they had been married for as long as I could remember, basically. But their divorce was much, much uglier than my parents' divorce. It pitted relative against relative, sister against sister, son against father, etc., etc., etc. It was ugly. Period. I don't think we (the family) ever really recovered from that. My heart aches at the sadness of it all. So many harsh words were said by so many of us. And, when the dust seemed to settle (much, much later) nobody really wanted to go over the wounds we had inflicted on one another. Nobody seemed to want to talk about it at all. It was like everyone just sort of swept all the pain and bitterness under the rug and tried to move on. Of course, everytime something bad would come up afterwards, somebody would "shake that rug out" and all those harsh feelings would come flying out again. And since nothing was ever discussed productively, the bad stuff never really left. It's still there. To this day. It comes out in so many little ways and now, it's come out in an even bigger way. One of our family has suffered a grievous physical injury. My cousin, Joey, was hurt at work a few days ago. He was life-flighted from Monroeville down to USA Medical Center in Mobile, Alabama where he is currently listed in critical condition. And here's where the shame of our family comes in. Not only were some of our family not notified through the family grapevine of this tragedy, but those that were and live relatively nearby, haven't even gone to the hospital. I know that there's nothing anyone in the family can actually do for Joey right now. He's in a medically induced coma and is in ICU. But why isn't any of our family there to help support his wife and his children during this time? Isn't that what we're supposed to do? I don't want to judge anyone, really I don't. But if we don't pull together during a time like this, then why do we even bother calling ourselves "family"? I spoke with Joey's wife, Karen, yesterday and, while she sounded strong and seemed to be holding it together, I couldn't help but hurt for her because of what she's going through, seeing her husband hooked up to all those machines and not knowing if he's going to make it or not. Surely a little help from us, Joeys' relatives, would allow her at least a moment or two to, I don't know, just...breathe, maybe. What the heck happened to us? How did we get this way? Aunt Sandi and I were talking yesterday and we both decided that maybe Grandma was the glue that held us together and once she passed over, some of us just forgot to hold on to each other. I truly (and literally) weep at the state of my extended family. So much has happened over the years that it's hard to know just who is to bless and who is to blame. Some of us just seem to hold onto the bad, like a shield of righteousness, and I believe that all that bitterness and anger has eaten away at our humanity. God knows I can feel how it's affected me. Why can't we see our way clear to change that, though? Does no one care about being a family anymore? I guess what I'm asking is, how do you stop loving your sister, your brother, your aunt, your uncle, your niece, your nephew, your cousin,......your family? I am as guilty as anyone else in the family. Believe me when I say that. I got angry at my mother and sister and didn't speak with them for over a year! And that situation, which happened fairly recently, had nothing to do with all that previously occurred in my family, except that maybe it's where I learned how to cut a family member out of my life. Not trying to blame anyone else for my actions, I'm just saying that it's not something I hadn't seen up close and personal before I actually did it myself. I'm ashamed of the way I handled what happened with my mom and my sister. I shouldn't have stopped talking to them. I should have screamed, stomped and hollered instead. At least we would have still been connected, you know what I mean? The road back is hard and bumpy and not at all what I thought it would be. But the three of us are trying. I wish the rest of our family could or would try, too. But maybe there's been just too much water under the bridge. Maybe love really wasn't meant to last forever. Maybe years of neglect can erase it as if it had never been. It sure feels that way to me sometimes.

This picture above was taken back in 1979 at my Grandma and Grandpa's house in Selma, Alabama. That little dark eyed kid in the foreground is Joey. The second row is my sister Sherri, my cousin Tammy (Joey's sister), and me. The back row is Uncle Wally and Aunt Sandi's boys, Wallace and Michael. Just a few of us cousins, sitting for a picture back when our family acted like...family.