This past week hasn't been great in the extended family news department. On Thursday, I learned my mom's mom has the early stages of Alzheimer's, and today I heard that my dad's mom has advanced liver cancer.
For one, it's early. For one, it's advanced. Just like that.
While I've never been close to my Grandma on my dad's side, and it's been oh... probably 15 years since I've seen her... but still, it makes me angry that someone- a caregiver, a doctor, someone - is responsible for letting it get so far, so bad. Like I said, we're not close. But on some human level, I feel bad that she is going through this, essentially, alone. She is cared for everyday by attendants waiting for their shift to end. It just doesn't seem fair, and it's not what I would want if I were in that situation.
It makes me sad to realize that as a family, for whatever reason- deliberate or not - we've seemingly pulled ourselves apart. Miles of separation, phone calls too far, too few between. I barely know most of them.
:::
On most levels, I feel like I could move anywhere and be fine. Even overseas. I'd keep in touch-- there's always the phone, blogs, facebook, ichat. But the fact of the matter is, day in and day out, without a personal connection, as inconvenient as it may be, you lose touch. The comments, the expressions, the nuances of mood, without these, you tend to lose a sense of what makes a person themselves. Are we changing our sense of what it means to be family? Are distances eroding, slowly, those bonds we held, in our past, more precious than anything?
It makes me sad to know that, small as my family is, pieces of it will soon be gone. A history I never really knew, impossible now to recollect. It makes me sad to realize that for a large portion of my life, some people have been brushed off as an inconvenience, with no decorum, no sense of obligation. Worth only what they're worth to me.
:::
She flattened the table cloth over the picnic bench, her boys running in the shade of the woods behind us. Her husband passed around napkins and plates, then opened packages of saucisson and taboulleh with mint leaves and tomato slices. She had been at home, mostly full-time, for the past three years with her youngest, being paid over half her salary as a teacher, her job held by a government that seemingly valued the connection between child and mother in the 'crucial' formative years. I struggled to understand her French, until she switched to her British-trained English. The language barrier stripped away any linguistic pretense we are so often accustomed to in conversation...
we think about moving here sometimes and how we could make it work...
but what about your families?
We'd probably be fine. It would take some getting use to, but it would be okay.
I think for us here, family is different, more important than it is for Americans. We tend to stay closer to our extended families. It seems like Americans don't stay as close to each other.
Well, jobs often call people to different cities, but we still stay close with calls and visits - it's different for different families.For us in France, family seems more important, more a part of life...
:::
As someone now with a small 'family' of my own, including dogs I love more than most people, I wonder how our modern sensibilities of self, independence, convenience, and family will play out in the end...
