Regrets?

There have been two people that I intentionally cut out of my life (not counting old boyfriends because that just goes without saying).

My aunt was married to my father's identical twin. As twins my dad and uncle spent their entire lives never living more than 5 miles apart. They fought like mad but had that weird unspoken twin thing too. Many people couldn't tell them apart but it was easy. My uncle always had this far away whimsical kind of a look. My father is the more practical one of the two. Somehow this translated to their faces.

My uncle married a crazy lady. That's him in the picture above and that's her peeking into the picture from the side. As I came to be an adult I realized that she was a pathological liar and a narcissistic one to boot. But we all loved my uncle so she kind of came along with the package. I think part of the reason he hung onto her was she put up with the alcoholism he struggled with his whole life.

Tragedy struck their family in 1983. One of their two sons and two of his buddies took the family car out in the middle of the night for a joyride. They hit a patch of ice and slammed into a tree. Two of them were killed, one of them being my cousin. He was 15 when he died. It devastated our family, but nobody more than my uncle. He was never the same after that.

I was 20 at the time and had started to figure people out pretty well. I watched as my aunt turned her son's funeral into a spectacle. I know people handle grief in different ways but I tell you her sole purpose seemed to be how much sympathy she could garner. It made me sick at the time and makes me sick now, remembering it.

But we loved my uncle so what are you gonna do? Then in 2000 my uncle was diagnosed with leukemia. He battled it for over a year but eventually it proved to be too much for him and he was sent home to die peacefully. My aunt turned his deathbed into a circus. For three days we were subjected to her controlling who could and could not be with my uncle as he lay dying. The funeral was another show.

The last time anybody in my family saw my aunt was in April of 2001, at my uncle's funeral. I don't miss her but have wondered over the years if I was too harsh. Wouldn't my uncle want us to be there for her? Who am I to judge people so harshly? These feelings and doubts are pretty strong for me right now because my sister ran into her the other day. My aunt didn't have much to say and made it pretty obvious that she was angry.

The beauty of a blog is that writing about stuff helps you to sort it out. It really has all come back to me about why I don't want her in my life. I am sorry for her, that she is no longer a part of our family and has no idea why really. But that doesn't mean I have to include such a mean, selfish and destructive person in my life.