Family emergencies burn away the refuse of false intent and reveal to those suffering the true colors and motives of those who once offered faux
support.

Once married, a new family is meant to formed. The stupid think that it is
so because of breeding. The selfish think it so because of breeding. The
egotistical think it so because of! Yes. Breeding. No. No you simple,
stupid fucking morons, no. A new family is forged because of the two
separate sets of strangers joined by a common thread of love.

This is not seen. Never seen. At least not by me yet, and I’ve been around
long enough to be jaded by this, amazingly, foreign notion. Family never
steps up, in my experience. There is always guilt, or inconvenience, or
chores attached to aid. In truth, I despise asking anyone for anything
because I fear their reaction. Their…tasks being held in their mind that
they believe are proportionate to the aid I ask for. It is never pleasant.
It is never quiet. It is always a big deal.

Death in my family- I man who I knew for a short time but loved died a
horrible, lingering, miserable, painful, agonizing death and I was there
with his grandkids and son. All would argue my time spent with this man could not possibly be significant merely because I didn’t know him. Like always, traditional human assumptions, traditions, and culture failed me and him and his kids. But stay I did. At times alone, listening to him waiting to die. Not me, mind you but him. Seeing is misery, knowing is pain- death was all he had left. And as I left to see him for the last time, I was made to feel guilty. I was made to feel guilt because I was neglecting my family.

Two sides of this fucked up puzzle are being jammed together, and all of
the adults embedded in this disgusting slurry of forgotten manners and
painful assumptions are making it worse by trying to give advice where it
isn’t warranted, needed, deserved, or even fucking wanted. But give their
two cents they must.

When my grandfather died, I was made, by my own parents/bosses, to close out the day and finish the deposits after they took his body off to be immolated. Why? Money. It didn’t matter, by the way, the amount of puissant money I shoved into the rotting cunt that is an American bank, but it was done, right? The morning he died, I was working and received a call to finish my task and then come and see my dead grandfather. They didn’t even wait. They didn’t even care. If they did care, I was blind to it.

As his death burned forth, my grief was stolen from me by my very family-
the one that said that we were all in this together. My grief was stolen
because it couldn’t compare to my mother’s. It couldn’t compare to my
grandmother’s. Who was tying to compare? Who was trying to win? Why did they think I was even trying to compete!? All I wanted was to feel my grief with
my family. Instead, I was forced to feel it alone.

And now when another grandfather in my life is dead, his death means less because the family business (the one established before  I married my wife) will suffer in my absence. I had to stare at my grandfather’s face after his death. It was frozen in the lingering misery that I left him in the night
before, hand clenched around his bed rail, the infection so bad in his
lungs that he couldn’t hide his pain, I had to stare at his grey waxen
face, and shuttered at his touch for my family failed to prepare me for for
just how long he was fucking dead, which was a long time. His body was
stiff, and beginning to swell. They never covered his face, and wouldn’t
let me when I expressed my distress.

The final moments of this new grandfather, the one outside my blood family but well within the new huge one created at the moment of my marriage, were lipped with guilt and unease as I try to grieve for the dead and those who he leaves behind, but I am accosted by the sensation of failure, of abandoning my family and placing my aging parents behind the wheel of a business that they don’t want and I can’t take.

All through this, my wife is barely there.

I stared at my new grandfather’s face after he died, me being the only
person in the room. His jaw fixed wide open, his eyes rolled into his skull, the repetitive, unceasing wheeze of the now useless oxygen machine, his
deathbed now stained with his lingering agony. I slept where he died for
this most recent visit.

In a full circle, the place where I work every single day of my life is the
same room my other grandfather died in- after his death, my father (who despised my grandfather) saw an opportunity to move the family business into the house. In either case my feelings were never addressed considering that I cared about both these people. When I addressed the issue, I downplayed it. I downplayed because I could.

True to form, I return to a place that now wants to hurt me because it
believes that I hurt it. This revenge, this sick familial revenge hangs
like burning tar in my stomach. Why must I be forced to do extra, or feel
poorly when I need help from the people that say they love me? It’s not
like I wouldn’t do extra without the guilt. Abuse. I would never want a
family member to feel this way, let alone my child! But this is the case
for me, and I fear for thousands upon thousands of others.

I love my family, and it makes me fucking sick when they feel they need to prove a point, teach a lesson, or give tough love from the position of settling a score.

I am an example. I am an example of what happens to a human being when they allow their surroundings and not their own person dictate how they think and feel. I am an example of modern day slavery in its perfect form, I am a mistake thrust upon this world by parents that never really got the point.

And above all this, above all the shit, I feel guilt. I feel guilt, anger,
and self loathing because even though family does terrible, horrible things
to one another, I still love them. And it’s not their fault for being as
atypical as every other bloated sack of organs on this wretched sewer we are somehow still calling a planet.