maarmie's musings

Monday, October 15, 2007

The last supper

The family came up here this weekend to see me one last time before I fly off into the wild blue yonder. I was stressing about it Saturday to C*, worried that my dad would use this meeting as one last chance to get a few digs in before I leave.

The end of Saturday evening would have been easier for me had that been the case. But, yet again, the 'rents had to make things as hard as possible on me by being...nice.

They exclaimed over the wedding photo album and the photos of Scotland I brought along to share. They asked thoughtful questions about my near future. They all said how good I looked. It all left me wondering why things couldn't have been this way all along, why they waited until I was get ready to move to another country to finally treat me like a human being.

Following years of mental and physical inactivity following the death of my grandfather, my gradmother looks old, sad and frail. Her hair is grayer than ever, she seems shorter than ever and she looks sadder than ever. That's the last time I'll ever see her, I'm sure.

Though we were extremely close when I was a child, we have had a falling out in recent years, and I don't really have any feelings about this meeting being our last or about the reality that my daughter will never meet her great-grandmother.

My brother and sister-in-law were great. For once, my brother was the butt of all the jokes, and he took it quite well. After losing more than 200 pounds, he is obsessed with healthy weight maintenance, exercise, nutrition and body fat percentages. As my brother is wont to do, he talked on and on about the topic, and we took this as an opportunity to roll our eyes, point out his phychological weaknesses and laugh our stupid laughs. I joined in with glee, finally knowing how it felt to be on the other side of the punch lines. I'm not saying I'm proud of how I acted, but it was interesting all the same.

But bro knows we think he's the biggest genius we'll ever meet in our lifetimes, so at least he's got that to cling to even as we insinuate, with smiles on our faces, that he'll one day end up in a padded cell somewhere bound by a straightjacket.

Love you, bro!

I was hoping dad and stepmom would break open their wallets for more than dinner, but it wasn't destined to be. No cash for only daughter and soon-to-be granddaughter. maarmie sad.

When brother and sister-in-law dropped me back at my place this morning after brunch, I couldn't help but cry. My brother is the only person in my family who has meant anything significant to me for such a long time, and it will be ages before I see him again. At least I leave seeing that he has become such a different and better person on so many levels and that he has (albeit obsessively) decided to take his good health into his own hands.

Food won't be killing him anytime soon, and that makes it so much easier for me to float away.

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