This may be the root of some big problems *Edit*

This is my favorite picture of my Daddy. It was taken before he was even married to Mama. He was in his early twenties.

I saw a link today on Facebook that had an unexpected effect on me. It was about a teenaged girl who went on some show or another and sang a song about her father, who died when she was 14. People were commenting on how moving it was. I didn’t watch it yet, because it hit me that now I think I may know one of the key reasons for my behavioral problems.

My Daddy died when I was 14. That, in itself, would not be the reason. After reading the comment on that video of the girl, I realized that I have NO memories AT ALL of anyone ever expressing sympathy or concern for me when Daddy died. I’m not being poor-little-me, either. It really seems like all the attention went to his 36 year old widow or his 67 year old bereft mother. I don’t remember my brother and sister getting any sympathy, either.

To support the idea that this may be a root of my problems, I DO remember one time, about a year and a half after Daddy died, I think, when I was out at my Aunt Trisha’s house. She was talking to somebody else, but I heard it. She was talking about a local boy, a friend of her son’s. He was 15 and his father had just died. She expressed so much sympathy, sadness, and concern for that boy who was not even related to her, and I remember VERY vividly the rage that built up inside me. Here she was, with her own nephew right in front of her…a nephew whom NOBODY EVER said, "I’m sorry your Daddy died" or "Are you okay? Do you need to talk? This must be hard for you." Nobody said that to me, but I was listening to my aunt talk about a boy I didn’t even KNOW and be so sad for him.

Yes, the amount of hurt inside me as I type this proves to me that this probably has been a big portion of my rage problem. I am fighting anger right now. Right now, being 38 and not 14 anymore, I want to be more mature. But it STILL hurts. I have no doubt that someone MUST have had concern about me, but nobody ever told me about it….and I desperately needed to know for sure. I never have felt important, so you can imagine that that only reinforced that I WASN’T important to anybody.

I’m sad.

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It’s much later in the day now. I just read this entry again, and I must say that I came across differently from what I would have liked. While it does still make me sad to think back on this part of my life, when I said that the attention went on his widow and his mother…..those two were my mother and grandmother. I would not EVER have wanted them not to have had that attention. I just wanted to share in it, because they were not the only ones who lost someone very important in their lives.

The thought that my mother was a WIDOW at an age two years younger than I am NOW makes me feel awful in a way I can’t even describe. When I lose sight of just what an impact that had on her, I focus too much on me.

Daddy’s death was kind of Mama’s death, too. I know that sounds strange, but for about two years, she was not the "real" Sue. She was emotionally detached. Not cold, but not the warm, loving Mama I’d always known and loved so much, either. She didn’t seem to be able to think her way out of a corner. She quit her first teaching job after only three years, because working the second half of the year after Daddy’s death (in the Christmas break of her third year) didn’t let her function professionally. I understood that then, and I understand it now. I lived with her. I know how much of a toll it took on her.

Even after she married Wayne, one year and ten days after Daddy died, it took her roughly another year to START coming back to being who she was before. She made it, though. She became Sue again, eventually. It was hard to watch. 

She told me once, during one of our frequent talks about her first marriage, that she felt like she had been cheated out of her life. She planned on growing old with Daddy, and then he died when they were both so young. Damnit, I’m crying as I type this, because I feel the impact of her words every time I think about them. 

And Nanny…..well, if you’ve read me for a few years, you probably know what life was like with her. It was ugly. Daddy was her only child, so his death turned her into a bitter, hard woman. She still had a certain amount of kindness and fun in her, and she had a great sense of humor, when she chose to use it, but her life was so incredibly tragic. When Daddy died, Grandpa was lying in a hospital dying slowly. He outlived Daddy by three years and three months. When HE died, Nanny more or less became a statue. A very bitter, raging statue. I wish like hell I would have been nicer to her.

The time for regret has finally come around. For the first two years after Nanny died, I didn’t really feel regret. We had made our peace. It was all okay now. It still is, from the perspective of a grandson who loved his grandmother. It isn’t, from the perspective of a grandson who realizes every day just a little more how disrespectful, hateful, bitter, argumentative, and dishonorable he was towards her, no matter what her behavior was like. I was not a good grandson to Nanny. I loved her, God knows. And she loved me. I KNOW she loved me.

*Sigh* I guess I really do have to complicate everything