An Odyssey
Jan 25th, 2010 by Nola
Last week we attended a funeral out of state. The trip got me thinking good and hard about what family really means. You hear talk about family being that which you create. But what of those people whose blood you share? Who really ARE your kin but with whom you have no relationship for reasons not entirely your own: What meaning do you give these relations in your life? What do they deserve? Or, are you cheating yourself by giving only what is required and no more?
I saw a picture of a small child on the wall of the deceased’s home. It stunned us how much that child looked like Sun. That child is now an adult; she’s never met her half-sibling; Sun has an aunt, well, two, actually, of whom she has no knowledge. Even if we want these women in our lives, how do we go about working on relationships 25 years later than when they should have started? How do you evaluate whether it is now worth the emotional homework to bring them into our lives?
What of uncles that you’ve met once or twice and adult cousins you’ve never met? How do these out-of-towners ever become non-strangers? Friending them on Facebook? That’s hardly enough.
How do you not get suspicious when there’s a hint of being cut out of that to which you are legally entitled? Even when the same people, your relatives, are being so generous, thoughtful. How do you give the benefit of the doubt to folks that have only blood to tie you together?
My mind kept thinking of the opening of one’s heart, one’s life, to an adopted child. And how, as the corollary, blood alone isn’t enough to hold a relationship together.
What does it all mean? Anything at all?
I, too, have struggled with this since I grew up without any extended family in America. My friends’ parents became like family and I eventually found numerous second families in my friends and their families. I finally met some extended family and they were complete strangers; even when my cousin moved to the same city, she was practically a stranger. So I think it isn’t just about blood. Families are so much more than that.
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My dad’s family all live 100s of miles away and haven’t seen most of them in almost 20 years. I wouldn’t be able to pick them out of crowd. But, I have friends that I think of as real family, real sisters I’ve never had. Blood is not the only thing that makes a family.
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This is deep. As a father estranged from his daughters, I think about it daily. It gives me pause to think, well, what if you married the devil once? What if somebody in the family has devil’s spawn for children? Or, to magnify it, what if you wake up to read the paper one morning and find out your blood runs in the veins of a heinous criminal? That your parent or child or sibling has been on a wild rampage last night? Blood is a strong bond, you only get one set of blood relatives. So even though we have these infinitely expandable extended families too, the supply of blood relatives is finite and they are not replaceable. There also needs to be a way to break that blood bond sometimes too, or at least distance your self from relatives that would drag you down and involve you in their terrible acts.
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