death visits

my great aunt died, peacefully i hope. the details are sketchy and i'm tired of grief. but we don't get to choose. that's the thing. we don't get to say, enough. i've had it. no more tears.

and i wonder that i've not done everything wrong to this point. sometimes i have this certainty about what i'm doing, right now, i'm doubting everything. not sure of anything.

i got a ticket last night and it amazes me how i don't drive the car but once in a blue moon, and get pulled over. i get a ticket for a tail light being out. which if i fix today it gets dismissed (that's the good part), but i still have to take the bulk of my day "before sundown" and address this problem.

i don't have time for this shit. as i told my husband. who, incidentally, drives the car every single day. rare, the day he does not drive it. the man has never gotten a ticket that i know of.

what is up with that.

i came home feeling like a black sheep. and then my sister tells me the real reason why my mom won't ever come to visit me, for years she has been giving me this, i don't like to fly, line. fine. but i told her,

kick a few back and get on. what's the big deal?

all the while, knowing she's missing time with her grandchild, and i enjoy her company when she comes.

but finally, FINALLY, i find out why.

it's because i yelled at her when she came out last time (years ago).

do you know why i yelled?

i asked my sister.

because she used the hand towel to dry the dishes (my mom does this religiously, contaminates perfectly clean dishes with hand towels or towels that need to be changed).

so i told her,

not in my kitchen.

and said to my sister,

you would have yelled at her too.

and she said,

yes, i would have.

so, for years i've been getting this song and dance about how "i don't like to fly" and not understood it.

that my mom couldn't even tell me straight up that my yelling at her was inappropriate, yet over the course of years exact some kind of fucking vengeance while i haul my cookies out to california is beyond me. i'm completely over my family.

i found this out only because my sister landed herself on the same "list" of disreputables in my family. this is my own fucking family.

i don't understand them, never have, never will. my grams was the only sane one of the lot of them, her children are sadly not anything like her (she never would have dried the dishes with a hand towel).

what can i say? i'm not sure. the more i think about it, the more angry i get. and i just need to let it go, but these are my blood relatives. though i've never felt a part of them (except for my grams, a fist full of cousins-we younger set get along way better than the older set, something about our ruthless honesty, we can speak to each other and care for one another, even have those difficult conversations and even fight, but these older folks bear their grudges to the grave, i don't fucking understand).

it's madness. but for friends, i'd be lost. utterly.
death still sucks for the living. i'll say that.

peace.