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luvxanderI got a call yesterday from my Aunt Jean back up in my hometown. Seems that my Dad's brother, LeDonn died on Tuesday. Now, his death is by no means a shocker to anyone, he'd long ago drank away any hope of ever having an even slightly healthy liver and was riddled with about 4 different kinds of cancer. She was calling to asl me to be a Pall Bearer (is that the correct spelling?) at his funeral, which will be held today.
The problem here, and I'm still not sure if this makes me any less human or just a cold bitch, is that I find myself unable to care. I agreed to be one of the Pall Bearers out of familial obligation and the fact that his sons did the same at my father's funeral, but the only memories I have of my Uncle are of him being a mean, drunken, abusive son of a bitch (quite literally, my grandmother was a bitchmonster from the planet of hell who hated me from the moment of my birth and took pleasure in telling me this).
I want to care. I mean, just on the basic human being level, I should care that he died, and from all appearances, died in great pain. But the tears I find myself crying, the thing that kept me awake last night, wasn't grief, it was guilt. It hurts something in me to know that there are people out there that can die in massive amounts of pain, begging to die even, and I can't bring myself to care about them.
I can remember times when I've pulled my car over to the side of the road and cried until my throat was raw and my entire body hurt because I saw a dead animal in the street. Why can't I bring myself to care that a human being, someone I grew up know and am related to, just lay in a hospital bed for 3 days, begging the doctors to let him die? Maybe they were right not to call and tell me any of this until after he'd passed. Hell, I haven't even stopped to wonder why they didn't call. They called my brother.
Does this make me a monster? If I saw this on one of the tv shows I watched? And there was this person sitting there, not really caring about the life and death of others? I'd call him a monster.
And even with all this going through my head, I care more about the amount of money I had to take out of my Writercon savings to buy a suit to wear to the funeral than the fact that was someone so important to my Daddy is dead.
I, apparently, have more issues than I thought. I thought my manic depression was my biggest downfall. But it seems that takes a distant second to the fact that I don't seem to have a soul.
The problem here, and I'm still not sure if this makes me any less human or just a cold bitch, is that I find myself unable to care. I agreed to be one of the Pall Bearers out of familial obligation and the fact that his sons did the same at my father's funeral, but the only memories I have of my Uncle are of him being a mean, drunken, abusive son of a bitch (quite literally, my grandmother was a bitchmonster from the planet of hell who hated me from the moment of my birth and took pleasure in telling me this).
I want to care. I mean, just on the basic human being level, I should care that he died, and from all appearances, died in great pain. But the tears I find myself crying, the thing that kept me awake last night, wasn't grief, it was guilt. It hurts something in me to know that there are people out there that can die in massive amounts of pain, begging to die even, and I can't bring myself to care about them.
I can remember times when I've pulled my car over to the side of the road and cried until my throat was raw and my entire body hurt because I saw a dead animal in the street. Why can't I bring myself to care that a human being, someone I grew up know and am related to, just lay in a hospital bed for 3 days, begging the doctors to let him die? Maybe they were right not to call and tell me any of this until after he'd passed. Hell, I haven't even stopped to wonder why they didn't call. They called my brother.
Does this make me a monster? If I saw this on one of the tv shows I watched? And there was this person sitting there, not really caring about the life and death of others? I'd call him a monster.
And even with all this going through my head, I care more about the amount of money I had to take out of my Writercon savings to buy a suit to wear to the funeral than the fact that was someone so important to my Daddy is dead.
I, apparently, have more issues than I thought. I thought my manic depression was my biggest downfall. But it seems that takes a distant second to the fact that I don't seem to have a soul.
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Date: 2006-03-21 07:54 pm (UTC)My grandfather was a mean, abusive SOB. (Couldn't even blame it on the demon drink - he never drank a drop.) When he died, I felt relieved. Not so much that he was dead, but that the possibility that I would have to be around him at any time in the future had died with him, and that other members of the family couldn't apply emotional pressure to get me to do so.
I don't think this makes either of us bad people. It just makes us people who were strong enough to get that emotional distance instead of curling up in a whimpering ball (at least emotionally) at the thought of being around our respective mean, abusive SOBs.
Well, that's my two bits (inflation) on it, anyway. Go easy on yourself, you haven't done anything to deserve anything else.