Family

The other day I was chatting with a friend about family and about mine and Jordon’ s decision to remove ourselves from our families.

 

For Jordon, it is complex but easy.  His father left in 1982 and they had a really bad relationship since then.  By the time that they started talking in 1999, there was seventeen years lost and Jordon is the antithesis of who his father is and in the end, it never worked out.  When Jordon was having heart problems a couple of years ago I tried to contact his father in looking for some medical information and never heard back so draw your own conclusions.

 

For my family, it was far more complex but in the end, my parents don’t believe anything I have told them and what I do tell them doesn’t matter.  I don’t know if it is a Guyanese thing, a Pentecostal thing, or just a stupid thing (therapists blame all three things) but what I said was ignored, spun, or defined as being insignificant.  It wasn’t just about my childhood either but how we interact as adults and after many years of it, you start to realize that nothing you will ever say will make a difference and you are only there so the church people won’t gossip about it.

 

The cost of both of those decisions have been different for Jordon and I.  While I grew up being close to my family by the time that I had gotten to the point of cutting off ties to them, I was okay with the decision and all of the pain had already happened.  As sad as it is, I really don’t miss my mom and dad or any of the other family anymore and if the truth was told, they probably don’t miss me.  Like I wrote before, I heard about my grandfather ’s death through the grapevine before I heard it from a family member.

 

For Jordon, it was different.  He was never that close to his dad but he had just phoned him to chat while running errands one day when the conversation turned and five minutes later our relationship was done.  That was five years ago and in hindsight I suppose Jordon should have seen it coming but never did and looking back at it, I think he missed the potential more than the reality of it and as Jordon now jokes, “I wouldn’t want to me my parent”.

 

It has been several years since those relationships have ended and the question that I hear a lot is, “What is it like?”  That answer is harder to answer than I would like to think but here goes.

 

The bad part of it is that other than Lee, we don’t have any family to rely on and that is a scary thought at times.  For Mark, he is our only child and until Lee decides to move out of basement, gets married and have kids, Mark is very much alone in this world and for all intents of purposes, our family tree now has a lot shallower roots than before.  At the same time we also have a lot of friends that we have come to trust, love, and can rely on.  Ethan Waters wrote a great book called Urban Tribes in which he articulated that is happening all over the world where as we become more mobile, family ties are being replaced by deep friendships, especially as the traditional ideas of family are changing.

 

The other bad part has been the gossip, especially from my hometown.  Many people who I considered friends never bothered to find out my side of the situation and have listened to rumors and innuendo to explain my decade long absence.  In protecting other people, some terrible things have been said about Jordon and I.

 

The good parts is that sometimes it is nicer to not have family around.  A friend of ours changed her schedule at work recently because if she works Thanksgiving Day, she doesn’t have to be around her in-laws.  We don’t have many of those dilemmas anymore.  For some reason people get really worried about us at holiday time but there is something wonderful to be said about doing holidays as simple or complex as we want to do.  It isn’t as if we don’t have family customs.  While my side of the family wasn’t fond of holidays, we have adopted some traditions that have been passed on through the Jenner/Robson/Cooper families to us and from us to Mark.  I have also taken some time to understand a bit of my Guyanese past and we try to celebrate that as well.

 

Was it the right thing to do?  It is hard to fully explain the decision without fully explaining our relationship with my family but the pain of having a relationship with my parents and family was a lot worse than not so I guess one could say it was the right thing to do, even if the decision was a really awful one to make.