We are estranged from my brother. When I started traveling a lot, my brother's wife decided to attack my mother on my first long trip. My sister stood up for my mom in the ferocious way that I would have if I had been present for the bullshit this woman was dishing out AT MY MOM. When I returned nearly a year later, my brother and his wife were being very sweet and delicate with me and there was no contact between them and my sister and mother. It always made me uncomfortable. I felt like I was being used as a pawn, that the fact that I would speak with them was some sort of validation of their position against the rest of my family. Against my mom, who single handed raised the three of us. I did not agree with what they did, and did not like the perception that "Look, Hilary's okay with us. The rest of those people are crazy." My mom and my sister are not crazy. My brother and his wife, are.
My sister was voicing increasing anxiety about the prospect of my brother and his wife coming to my Grandmother's funeral. The drama that would ensue. The stress. Sitting in a bar that had walls covered with Scottish kilt fabric, I texted my brother. I felt like it was time for me to take the bullet, not my sister or my mom. Me, the good one, the nice one, the pushover. I was finally going to speak up. I identified myself in the text because my brother doesn't even know my phone number. I politely asked him to come alone to my Grandmother's funeral, if he intended to come at all. I really didn't give a shit if he brought his kid, but didn't know how to say, "Can you at least leave your cunt wife at home?". I asked him to do it for the sake of my mom, that it was her mother's funeral and it was important to me that she could say goodbye to her in a stress-free environment. I really did not think his wife would be terribly heartbroken about not attending the funeral of a woman she had met a handful of times. And, my brother is a big boy. He can handle the funeral on his own. The thing that was most important to me was my mom.
Somewhere in the blur of days we stopped by the hospice. I went inside and delivered a large Poinsettia to the nurses and thanked them for taking such good care of my Grandmother. Another group of people was standing in the hallway, crying. Someone else had passed. I knew I was going to cry again just from walking in that place and I quickly exited.
I wasn't going to attend the funeral. The had to schedule it for the following Monday, as Catholics don't have funerals on Sundays and Saturday was booked up. I had already missed a week of work; I knew I couldn't ask for anymore days, though my sick leave bank is so massive I could technically take the rest of the year off. My niece and sister were on their way up to accompany my mom to the funeral. I received a dramatic response from my brother about how he "broke the news to his wife and child that they weren't permitted to attend their Grandmother's funeral". Wife and child. As if I don't know their names. Caveman style drama. He thanked me for "allowing" him to come. I didn't respond, as the end result of texting him in the first place was successful. I still have the texts saved to my phone. I don't know why.
On my last night in Saginaw, we ended up again around the table of my aunt and uncle, drinking wine. My cousin and her partner stopped by a couple of hours after I probably should have stopped drinking. When I rose Saturday morning to get ready for my flight, my head was pounding. As my mother drove me to Flint, I threw up out of the door of the car and in the process, down the front of my clothes. I entered the airport. There was one person at the security area. I sheepishly went through and proceeded to the gate and sat in a chair crouched over with my head in my hands. I made a mental reminder not to touch anything except bottled water while at the airport. I heard the flight attendants call my name and I feared they weren't going to let me fly. To the contrary, they told me they had moved my seat to the emergency row. Yes, the passenger with vomit all over her clothes will be assisting you if the plane crashes. I passed out before the wheels left the ground and only woke up when we landed in Chicago.
I made it back to Atlanta in the late afternoon. That night as I slept, Lola curled up beside me. She breathed heavily as she slept and for a second, breathed quietly.
I woke up, startled, thinking I was beside my Grandmother's bed in the hospice. But I wasn't. I was at home in Atlanta.
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