I Play My Little Part/In Something Big

It’s over. Popped half a xanax at the last second and followed the sound of bagpipes down the driveway. It was really strange, after four years, to suddenly be thrust back into the current of family again. Even as a snag, disruptive and messy. None of my mother’s siblings have spoken to me in four years, barring my mom-aunt who helped raise me as a child, and almost all of them were just there, older and uglier. Grey and thin and crying in kilts.

‘I’ll accept with poise and grace
When they draw my name from the lottery’

I have learnt to dread being waylaid for private conversations at events like these, and my uncle’s wife immediately pulled Sibling and me aside to cry and tell us how much Bea loved us and wanted the best for us and all sorts of nonsense. But the truly interesting part is that apparently Bea admitted to this aunt that Bea was a horrible parent. She also told this aunt that I disinvited her from our wedding, which is a straight up lie, so no wins without losses, I suppose.

‘And they’ll say 
;All the salt in the world
Couldn’t melt that ice;’

I don’t know how to process this. I wasn’t ready, but you aren’t, are you.

‘I’m the one who gets away
I’m a New Jersey success story’

Bea was one of seven siblings, smushed in the middle of the pecking order as a child. Five of them were there yesterday, Bea being obviously dead, and New Zealand Uncle being unable to feasibly fly into the Plague Lands for a little mourning. Three of those five remain uninterested in speaking to or acknowledging me. That’s approximately one more hostile sibling than I anticipated, but it’s not a shock. I don’t know. Nothing to do but pack up and move on, I suppose.

‘And I’ll tell you something else
That you ain’t 
Died enough to know
There’s still some living left
When your prime comes and goes’
– Jimmy Eat World