Ashes To Ashes; Dust To Dust

Like the Phoenix, a visit by my second son and two of his children "resurrected" many memories.

Wish he was closer and around more as his recollections helped to put the challenges of each day coping with the memories and the constant pain experienced by actions of his brother (and wife) aside for a short time.

So different....yet we don't always agree, we've had differences of opinion...the major difference is he and my daughter take responsibility for their actions, words, and yes, deeds. 

They don't strike out verbally when they have a disagreement, when they do not want anyone to dare to "restate" something that was so wrong, so against teachings that respect others and do not "throw mud in their faces" and then deny it's there.

We survive as a species with positive experiences; negative experiences have the opposite affect -- from wars to everyday negative treatment of one person to another, we create harsh and destructive environments when we could choose to communicate, step back, reconsider and respect.

It had been a somewhat trying day as I returned after "staying away" from one of the scenes of the "crime" perpetrated by Julia against my mother, my husband, me and my daughter.

Arriving at the 11 AM services of our Church, I saw very few cars on the parking lot. I'd been told there was a "family service" in another part of the facility where everyone was welcomed and more "participation" was usual.

SEPARATION. SEGREGATION. All because one "segment" could not, would not, find a way to compromise, to come together.

SO LIKE OUR FAMILY.  I'd tried over many years to "resolve" situations and we usually succeeded after far less time than has been now (I'd mentioned in a previous entry my son had dictated I could no longer have contact with or speak with "his/their" children -- that was over five years ago). 

THAT WAS BEFORE their latest family addition.

My husband, my mother, for whom there was an "obligation" to try resolution in the past are no longer with us. 

Difficult and challenging for me? Absolutely. 

But riding the merry-go-round of my oldest son's constantly placing me in the position of being verbally abused I knew I had to cut this cord and pray I live long enough to see at least one of them not just grown but out of their parent's home.

He, of course, tells me and everyone that "I" am the abuser.

He's also told me how incompetent I have always been, how many "life mistakes" I made (he lumps my husband, his father, into this, also but it's always "insinuatted and never really directed specifically at him).

He used the word "you" and criticized everything we did and told me how "incompetent" I was in "not planning better" and how I "wasted time and money".

I'd restate how he has what he has because of what we did and gave to him, his brother and sister, and didn't ask for anything in return but he insists he's "self made" down to "paying for his complete college education".

I'm somewhat of a "keeper" and so when I go through records, yes, that many years ago, I find the "aid" program for each of his years and the obvious difference in the total of the awards and the loans and the "missing piece" is the amount we had to pay to the school. 

Not to mention we bought him a computer, two actually, paid for all his books every year and he was a double major in Engineering with books reflecting the national debt (or so it seemed), gave him the opportunity to attend a school on the East Coast and we live in the Midwest; let him keep ALL his earnings from work when he was asked to "leave" for a year the University we worked so hard to help him achieve entry; provided storage for his "things" over the Summer; paid him for work in our business which meant incurring the "employer" costs of matching taxes as well and diminishing what we could have had; paid for that "extra" undergraduate time he messed up on; drove him out to school and picked him up when it ended; gave him a car to use (reducing us to one vehicle instead of two); bought him a bike one year and he "forgot" to lock it so it was stolen -- brand new; paid for gas and repairs on the car and found him running it in an annual "race" without telling us; paid for all repairs, tires, oil changes, etc; get the picture? And more ... he wanted a "loft" in his on campus room so we bought the materials and then had to store them locally along with all his "living off campus" things because he decided he no longer wanted to live "on campus"

By the way, did I mention he was one of three children and for a year we took in a relative's daughter when she had no parents and gave her what we gave our daughter?

Or that "first born" had a brother at the same University also in double major engineering program who didn't "take off" a year? Or his sister also deserved to go to college.

Well, I guess we were just incompetent -- or so I've been told I was/am.

It's obvious to me, it's because he made major mistakes and had to leave school for over a year; when he returned he had an additional year and was given more loans than awards -- to be expected-- but we still had "our share" to pay.

And, we also now had his brother's "share" to pay as he was now in college AND we'd taken on caregiving for my husband's son's child who lost her parents and that side of the family wanted to try to give the child a home -- with a daughter, just days in age older than this child, we became the obvious choice.

Then husband became very sick, 100 days critical intensive care, home to need my providing 24/7 extensive care changing three and sometimes four bags on openings that kept happening in his abdomen while also providing care to my mother, then in her late nineties, who had been and continued to be a part of our immediate family living with us.

You know what? It's deminimus, his "rants" and his "beliefs". The records reflect the truth and we know what we did and how we did it.

The bottom line is:  "Yes, my son, we gave too much and provided too much putting ourselves at the back of the line and not anticipating severe life crises or changes in each of us there was no way to anticipate.

Believe what you want. Live how you choose. As for me and "my house", we know truth and follow its lead.