Choking on the Blood

My mother always said that family would stick with you until the end. This was in response to my obvious preference of friends over family when I was but a teenager.  I thought it was bullshit back then yet another ploy to try to get me under strict control.  But secretly, part of me desperately wanted to believe. And so I did.

As a young adult, when life would kick me in the teeth, I would pick up the phone to talk to my mom.  Did it ever really help? No.  Most of the time it was painfully obvious that she would much rather sit smoking cigarettes, watching her daytime soaps, drinking her Pepsi's.  Where was the good advice?  Where was the tender understanding?  My anger and my rage grew over her apparent indifference.

As a thirty-something divorced mother, one that entered recovery for alcoholism, I realized that my mother did the best that she was able with the tools that she had.  After years of recovery, I realized that she was human and had a limited attention span.  Later still, breathing down the neck of 50, I am diagnosed with a terminal illness and ask for help. Once more she is impotent and unable to give it.

Am I angry? No. 

We place so much pressure on our mothers to catch us when we fall.  And why?  What on earth did my dad ever do for me? Where was his good advice and tender understanding?  And today, with the same disease sapping energy from my limbs, siphoning breath from my lungs...Where is this family that they spoke of?

I'll tell you where mine is and it's not a pretty picture.  My mothers suffering from fibromyalgia, among many other health disorders.  It turns out she's been on prescription drugs since her 30s. Kind of explains a lot.  My biological father has been out of the picture for many years, raising a whole other family.  There just wasn't any bonding there. My stepfather has always been the stoic one. The one left holding the financial bag. The one that I hated as a child and always excused as an adult.   Today, he offers help with his lips but when I actually called with the smallest of favors the answer was "I'm sorry Tina, but no."  

My brother is no help whatever as he cannot be trusted to tell anything close to the truth.  The sister closest in age to me, and the one who shares my blood, offered flowery promises of how she would have my back through all the trials and tribulations that this disease dished out, including overseeing my husband to be sure he carries out my wishes.  A few months later her negative attitude left me no option but to place a boundary effectively removing her from my life.  My last sibling, another sister, was diagnosed with multiple myeloma cancer, third stage.  I thought, well, at least I have one decent family member. But truly, I have watched her not be able to put down the cigarettes that are killing her. It is difficult to watch the denial process blind her to all that is detrimental to her life.

Am I angry?  No.

But I do feel a bit sorry for myself to have been born into such a defective family that is incapable of being there for me in my hour of need..