A Heavy Heart and Head
I’m extremely sad about the upcoming loss of a member of one of my extended families. This goes beyond my blood family, but it involves someone I care about nonetheless.I keep wishing I could have been involved in the process that resulted in this departure, wondering if I could have found a way to avoid it.
I keep wanting to know the whole truth so I can quit playing through the various possible scenarios in my head. But I am just a peon in this group, with no title before or after my name and they are the only ones who know.
I keep wondering about my potential involvement in this family. Will I be able to repair my trust in those who made this happen or will it linger as an impediment that causes me to distance myself?
I’m sure the person most affected will be just fine. This person has a wide support group that extends well beyond our shared immediate family.
Family unrest is always difficult, especially when you have come to know and love the many members as I have these people.
It’s probably good we’re going away to Germany later this week. Our trip will not only give me a chance to celebrate with my blood family, but hopefully it will distance me from this other problem about which I can do nothing but feel sad.
posted by Barbara at 3:06 PM
6 Comments:
Urg ... no idea how to comment on this because I know even less than you (and if you think circumstances and possibilities are playing in your head imagine mine, I have an unconstrained universe of circumstances and actors I can create – at least your universe is constrained to some extent).
My advice is to simply do what is right - whether that makes you popular or not. In the end, being a person of integrity is better than not.
I'm with Richard. Do what's right and take comfort in the knowledge of that. Sounds like the trip is well timed to restore a little bit of your peace.
This is a big problem and on one hand I would say if you had a relationship with the person prior than to retain it...but then again it depends on who the relative is and how they are related...
With broken relationships there is the whole problem that it is not just the dissolving of immediate the family, there is also the dissolving of a life.
I guess it depends if the relationship that dissolved has done it in a way that is amicable. If it is all out war, there will be no winners and your relationship with either will just cause pain and anger with the other.
And there is no switzerland in this territory you could be used against the other.
Maybe the best advice is to lay low and see how things resolve and when the initial hurt and anger is less maybe then it will be the time for relationships. But then maybe that will be wrong for they might hold it against you that you weren't there for them?
Stay in Europe maybe?
Richard, Kristin, Colette -- Thanks for all the well-meaning advice, although I was purposely vague, giving you few specifics with which to frame my problem. Be assured I will continue to do what I think is right. (Sounds like deja vu from a year ago in a different arena.)
family and extended family relationships are so important...and yet they are not always easy. A word here, what someone said about someone, these are words that make the biggest impact in our lives. One of the biggest gifts that we can give the one of forgiveness. It is not the easiest gift, but it is the most precious. When I forgive someone about something they have said or done, I am also hoping that I will be forgiven for something that I have done that needs forgiveness. It seems that things that are done around death are the hardest to forgive, possibly because our nerves and feelings are already jagged and sore, but to hang on to hurts only further damages us. I don't think that any of us have so many family or friends that we afford to lose any. However, we need to take care of ourselves and stay away from toxic relationships.
I am sending warm thoughts to you in the hope of rapid healing. Sometimes time away from a situation is a good thing.
Yours, Kelly
Kelly -- I wish I could be more open about exactly what is happening here because I can see you all shaking your heads as you consider what advice to give. It's a complicated matter that for a variety of reasons needs to stay rather unclear.
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