I’ve Got My Grandfather’s Blood

Last week or sometime, Sibling said
. ;I wish I was still as mad as you are;
And I prickled some because I’m not. But I’ve had time to think about madness over the past couple of weeks of reading chaotic and contradictory status reports on Bea from the hospital and putting the garden to bed and rewatching only the end of The Haunting of Hill House_{<because they all deserved it, I’ve decided. Whole family of assholes>}.

‘I’ve got a lot of loose ends
I’ve done some damage
I cut the rope so it frayed’

I’m not mad at Bea anymore. She was a stranger. Years ago I let go of the parenting we deserved and the love we should have had and the fury at the treatment we did get. The hardest part is letting go of the parent you want. The parent you needed and who doesn’t exist. I’m still vindictive and malicious about her, but more on par with how you wish disliked coworkers ill. Lazy, pointless ire.

‘And I got a lot of
Good friends
Keeping me distracted
Keeping my sanity
Safe’

No. I am still mad. I am still mad at our childhood and the_<useless> adults who looked on passively. I’m mad I have to now be involved in cleaning up the mess she’s left behind. I’m mad at basically every one of her six siblings_{<four of them, to be exact>} individually as humans and as people. I’m mad at the family friends who still vociferously deny events. So I guess I am still mad, but not like that. And it’s important to me to make the distinction. I worked hard to be this exact kind of mad and I’m proud of my work. I am no longer mad in ways that wreck me.

‘Here
I stand on the edge of the ledges
I’ve made
Looking for a steady hand’

Sibling played her songs at the hospital that she sang to us when we were kids. I did not ask if Sibling cried and I did not ask what she said to Bea. I did ask if she touched her_<foul> and she did, but only after she was dead.

I took a framed 4×6 from her house yesterday because we were young in it and on my grandparents’ couch in the house my dad grew up in. It hit me about an hour ago that it was in my sightline to take it in the first place because she put it somewhere she could look at it with great frequency. The boys say she talked about us both a lot, right up to now, but neither had anything to say when I asked what she possibly could have been saying about us.

‘And I take a little
Too much
Without giving back
If blessed are the meek
Then I’m cursed’

She drafted a spite will when we disowned her. I always hoped she had. She explicitly disinherited us both to the tune of $1 each. I am delighted by it, but it’s both unsigned and unfiled, so no one’s going to abide by it. I wish they would. Just saddle up my uncle’s kids with her hoard and make my least favorite of her horrible friends executor_{<per the deceased’s wishes>}. It would be most pleasing to me. Instead, her PoA is working to become executor. No one’s even discussed what we’re going to have to do with the house. It’s a biohazard. It will cost thousands to clean and, even clean, it will still be structurally unsound and foul. This is what I’m mad about. I’m mad to have to waste any time or energy cleaning this cesspool of a childhood home.

‘I want to learn how to love
Not just the feeling
Bear all the consequences
I want to learn how to love
And give it all back
Forgive me all that I’ve done
Here
I stand
On the edge of the ledges
I’ve made
Looking for a steady hand’
– Noah Gundersen