Still Smiling

I realized I forgot a birthday this month, my brother, Bill. He has been gone a long time, but I think he is making his presence known lately. Little things like finding a poster he and my brother Sam painted my mom for mother's day, my nephew taking his picture down from the wall.

I think I was in 6th grade when my parents decided to become foster parents. My mom said that her family always took in her friends that needed places to stay as a kid and she wanted to do that too. So this teenage boy a couple of years older than me came to live with us. It was immediately apparent that this wasn't the kind of kid I would hang out with in school. I recall being at war about accepting him in, and losing my place as oldest. We would get along and then fight just like with my real brothers and sisters, but it was always a more tenuous relationship than I had with my younger sister and brother.

He got in some kind of trouble, I don't really recall what, but the result was he went to live in a group up in northern NM. We would go for weekend visits and I remember going to his GED graduation in Espanola. When he aged out of foster care he came back and lived with us. It was okay for a while, but eventually he started drinking and the alcoholic gene ran strong in his family. One night he was in very strange mood, locked in the room he shared with my brother blasting metal, my parents were out somewhere and I found a bottle of vodka in the freezer and of course mentioned it to them when they got home. The evening ended with him punching my dad, a scuffle and him being kicked out. My mom helped him get set up at an apartment and he still came to family functions. He would straighten up for a while and then he would start drinking again. He started going on binges where he would lose memories of a whole week, doing things like selling his car and having no memory of it. Still practicing tough love, they didn't bail him out and pay his rent when he had nothing left, and because of the past incidents they didn't let him move back in with us. I recall giving him a hard time when I went to go pick him up for Christmas dinner about it. You know in my self rightous 16 year old girl way, overall I was probably a jerk. He ended up living with his paternal grandfather, who I guess was a piece of work himself.

I still vividly remember coming home from a school trip in early January walking in the door and knowing something was terribly wrong. He had decided enough was enough and ended his life. I was pissed, how could he do that to us? He really had screwed up this time. Guiltily, and quietly, I also felt relief for him. Despite the fact that I had always been told suicide was wrong, I had seen his desperate struggle, his fear of never being able to break free of his family curse. I wondered if he was better off.

Watching my mother struggle with his choice, and her feelings of what else could she have done was hard. While she never hit bottom, I knew it nearly killed her. Years later when discussing another suicide, and when I encouraged her to offer comfort to the mother, she said something to the effect that her friend had lost a child while she was just a foster mom. I asked her if she had really loved him any less than us, because I don't' think she did, many people would have given up when he left for the group home.

You want to know something, I can't be sure I ever called him my brother all those years ago. I probably always referred to him as my foster brother, keeping some distance from him. Something that still cuts me to the quick today. I can forgive myself for being what I was, a teenage girl who had this kid living in her house. I don't think I was cruel, but not always as nice and giving as I could have been. Yet it is hard to recall my actions, and not feel ashamed, through the eyes of a more understanding adult.

The grief has found me throughout the years. The first time I went back to the same funeral home for my boyfriends grandmother a few years later, the tears I barely cried at his funeral found their way out. When a girl in college was freaking out about a suicide and grieveing for a kid we didn't even know, I was angry people made such a big deal about suicides. (Bill's was the second in a week that year, we think he partly did it because of the first.) When I went through my own worst depression and was thinking of how I wasn't so fond of life anymore, and there was no hope of recovery, the first hand knowledge of how much pain I would cause my family,helped me from doing anything rash.

Today I feel sad at all the joys in life he has missed, because I am sure if he was here, he would be involved in birthdays, holidays. I wonder what his kids would look like. I would be ribbing him about being old and almost forty.

In a moment of sadness, my mom wondered if being a foster parent was a mistake. I told her no. While it was hard, painful and often not beautiful, it was the right thing to do. Malathionman wrote an excellent post about his kids, who are adopted from the state. His post reminded me of how worthwhile these parents are. Yes it hurts, and the struggles can be awful, the outcomes often not ideal, but can you imagine if he hadn't made that rash mistake? I have hope for Alissa, Austin and Sarah. You may not be able to make all there problems go away by loving them, but you are still blessing them.

Tonight we made had a as scrapbooking event at church the theme was family. One of the best albums I saw had pictures of a now broken family and this quote... “Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened.” Dr. Suess*

When I Get Where I am Going

Have you ever realized you were doing exactly the same thing last year or the year before and wondered about the pattern? I found myself doing that yesterday. I was typing up an obituary for my grandfather three years ago and oddly enough I found myself writing one for his wife, my dear Nanny three years to the day later. Odd how that works out.

I will always remember and have a slight ache for these people. I am the eldest grandchild, some would claim more spoiled that the most. Of course all those people are younger than me and I could point how in my eyes they stole some of my attention, but I digress. ; )

I have a cousin only 6 weeks younger and when we were old enough they started taking us for camping trips. I think around the age of 4 or 5, we would load up in their motor home and go the the mountains or a lake. Pa pa used to like to tell how we were asking Nanny to fix us a snack before we hit the city limit sign. I wonder if I would still enjoy a can of beanie weenies so much.

On Saturdays they would call and we would all go over and he would load us up in the van and take us to Roswell and we would go to K-Mart, which usually meant some snacks we didn't get at home like an Icee and if we were lucky a new toy. By this time that might mean taking 6 or 7 kids. I don't recall my mom asking them to watch us much, I remember it being the other way around, them calling to see if we could come over.

I remember realizing with this side of the family we were a bit redneck. They were both from Oklahoma. Nanny was the daughter of a preacher who married the boy from the wrong side of the tracks. Pa pa's family were had some rascally habits by the stories my mom tells. One of them paints his father as a man who was kicked out of the New Mexico Territory for preaching on street corners, collecting and offering and then using the money in the bar. Where as Nanny's dad was a respectable preacher named King David. I was always fascinated by that name until she told me that she had an Uncle named XYZ since he was the last kid.

Christmas was big at their house that is where we spent Christmas morning. Nanny had a big Sears catalog and we would spend hours going through it writing our names next to stuff we wanted. Then we would spend days trying to guess what was in the boxes under the tree. One year I had decided based on the shape, size and weight that she had got me the Crayola Caddy I put my name by. However oddly enough on Christmas morning that present was no where to be found, she had hid it, since I was such a smart alec and figured it out.The three of us at my brothers wedding.

We were all welcome anytime, if you knocked on the door before entering you would get razzed. We would drop by with dates in high school or our friends, we were always welcome. Sunday dinners after church with food supplied by Colonel Sanders, then we would fall asleep watching T.V. Their house was the hub for birthday parties, holiday parties, and any day of the week dropping by.

Gamely wearing the ballon hat I made at the family reunion.

I felt a very tight bond with Nanny, and I know most of my cousins would say the same. Although I think out of all my grandparents I am the most like her. She could be stubborn and tough, but full of laughter. We all teased each other and having a quick wit was a requirement around her. The last conversation I had with her, we laughed about how I met one of her former home nurses who gushed about how much she loved my Nanny because when she asked her to do something she didn't want to she replied I am old and I don't give a damn. Even though I have know this day was coming for over a year, it still takes my breath away to realize she is gone now.

With my nice and nephew and one of my favorite photographs of her.

The funeral is Friday morning and we want to celebrate the Legacy my grandparents left us, especially her. We have laughed and cried all day with stories and remembering. My cousin spilled red nail polish on the carpet and as we cleaned it up, I told him she is up in heaven saying those darn kids, I leave for ten minutes and you make a mess.

I love you Nanny and know I'll see you again. Have that can of beanie weenies ready okay?