Wherein I detail to you the events that have conspired to create a throbbing ache in my temples that has lasted for the past seven days – the physical symptom of a metaphorical headache that has been going on for a year.
My family is currently in the middle of what it is choosing to see as a crisis. About a year ago, my grandfather left my grandmother for another woman. Three years previous to this, they had both sat down and discussed the fact that theirs was a marriage of convenience, and that now that their children were grown and gone, neither of them thought that the marriage would survive. The entire family knew that they were both unhappy, and was secretly relieved when my grandfather broke things off.
That’s what happened. One would think, looking at this story, which took less than a paragraph to tell and seems to be melancholy but not necessarily dramatic, that my grandparents got divorced and my grandfather remarried and my family was disappointed that this very comfortable part of their lives was different, but moved on and learned to assimilate into the new now. Unfortunately, my family isn’t wired that way.
What happened instead is that my grandmother started slandering my grandfather and his new girlfriend mercilessly, both to the family and to people outside of the family. She spread rumours that he was mentally ill, that she was happy in their marriage and he left her destitute, and that the woman with whom he was now living was a harlot who made a game of stealing married men. My grandfather stopped coming around to visit the family because everyone believed what my grandmother was saying about him, and he didn’t want to engage his kids and grandkids in a tug-of-war between loved ones. In the past year, I’ve seen him only a handful of times.
For my part, I was emotionally past the separation about ten minutes after I heard about it. I love both of my grandparents, and I had known (ever since living with them for nine months when I was ten years old) that they weren’t happy together. My grandmother thrives on being useful – she needs to be asked to take care of her family. My grandfather wanted an adult life outside of babysitting and continuing to raise his now-adult children. They both look at their lives very differently, in ways that aren’t compatible. I knew that it would probably be difficult for everyone for a while, but I thought that we could all be accepting of the fact that things change.
It’s been a year since the separation, and my grandfather is still estranged and my family is still participating in back-and-forth dialogues about him as though this were some sort of military action. Most of this occurs via email, and I am included in the list of contacts to read the arguments about who’s said what recently, and who’s done what wrong, and who’s visited my grandfather and “that woman”, and who is daring to have something else to do with their time besides talk about all of the above.
Perhaps the worst part of this is the dishonesty that takes place in these conversations. My family is large, and I have had the opportunity to speak to every aunt, uncle, cousin, grandparent, and great-grandparents about the separation (not to mention the frequent conversations that I have with my mother and siblings) on more than one occasion. Every single one of them has lied to me. They have made up stories in order to placate some people and implement others. I know my family, so I tried from the beginning of this whole ordeal to remain neutral and, unfortunately, take no one’s word as truth. It wasn’t until Christmas break that I realized this was not going to be enough.
Over Christmas break, I went with my grandfather to deliver presents to different members of the family. He decided that he wanted to go while no one would be home so that they could have their gifts without feeling obligated to engage in some sort of showdown. One family, however, was at home when we arrived – one of my aunts and her daughter, who is about a year older than me. I haven’t spoken to them face-to-face in many years, because they tend to avoid family gatherings. The family always said it was because my aunt was antisocial. On this day, my aunt confessed that she had no interest in the amount of drama that the family was always wallowing in.
The visit was lovely. We caught up on all the things that had been going on in our lives over the past few years. My aunt asked where my grandfather’s girlfriend was, because she wanted to meet her. She said she just wanted both my grandfather and my grandmother to be happy, and that if the only way for that to happen was outside of a marriage, that was fine. My cousin said that she had been simply refusing to speak to my grandmother and other members of the family about the separation, because it was too much work to try to keep up with the latest gossip and keep everyone happy. I was so relieved by their honesty and sanity. I said to myself, “Finally. Here are some people who have this thing in perspective.”
I went back to my mother’s house that evening and raved to her about how wonderful the visit had been. My grandmother had been telling everyone for the past year that this aunt and cousin had no respect for my grandfather, and wouldn’t even let him pull his truck up in their driveway – yet here we all had been, sitting together, visiting, talking, like normal, sane people. We had even managed to discuss the separation without slandering anyone or yelling at each other across the kitchen. I told my mother that she should call these people and talk to them directly about what they had told me, because it would probably make her feel better about being caught between her two parents. When I returned home after Christmas break, my mother was happy and excited at the prospect of things finally returning to normal; she thought that if she could get my aunt and cousin to come out with their neutrality, it would reveal how many lies were being spread, and bring down the swelling on the issue.
A few days ago, my grandfather sent out his first family-wide email in a year. His last one was sent immediately after the separation, and in it, he detailed the circumstances under which he had left my grandmother, and the way he hoped things would work from that point on. In this latest email, he expressed his disappointment in the way his family had handled things, and suggested that everyone move on.
The backlash from this email was catastrophic. Everyone took it upon themselves to write out an email defending their right to slander whomever they wished and to continue dwelling on the past, because obviously this is the worst thing that has ever happened.
I skimmed most of these emails and deleted them, but they continued to crowd my inbox, so I sent a two-sentence email asking that I please be removed from the list of people to be sent these dialogues, as I had no interest in taking part. A few short hours later, I received yet another email – this time from the aunt with whom I had visited over Christmas.
Since I’ve been back home, my mother has had the chance to speak to many family members about my revelatory visit with this aunt. Contrary to what they were now expressing in email, it was my understanding that my family members were just as relieved by my aunt’s neutrality as I was. Contrary to what my aunt had expressed to me in person, she was now emailing the family to say that she had invited me and my grandfather into her home out of obligatory politeness, that we had made brief small talk (none of which touched upon the separation), and that she had then asked us to leave. That in regards to her neutrality, our conversation about the separation, and her friendliness toward my grandfather, I was lying.
I felt the eyes of every member of my family turn toward me.
I decided to take some time to think about how I was going to respond to what felt like a very personal attack on me. I talked to my mother. I became very tired. I became very angry. Finally, I became resigned to what I had to do.
I spent a few hours carefully choosing the words I was going to put into a succinct and honest email. In this email, I did not defend myself or insist upon the truth of what I had said to my mother about my aunt. Instead, I told my family in no uncertain terms that I would never speak of the separation again, and that anyone in the family who had something to say about the separation had nothing to say to me.
My family members have responded in a colourful variety of ways. I have been told that “fuck off” would have taken less thought (although “fuck off” is not what I meant, and I am evidently willing to think about things). I have been brushed off as a “child fresh out of high school” (so what could I know about anything, right?). I have been informed to “open [my] eyes: [I] am involved whether I think so or not” (even though involvement is generally characterized by participation, which I’m not offering). I have been told that I will never be spoken to again (by people to whom I haven’t spoken in upwards of five years). I have been alerted as to my responsibility for the “attacks” made on my family (as though an email calling me a liar were somehow hurtful to someone else). I have been accused of deliberately lying and hiding from the negative consequences.
I have become the scapegoat, and I am okay with that.
Knowing my family for my entire life has taught me that blood is not thicker than water; in fact, it’s not thicker than much. If I had chosen not to withdraw from the verbal tirade, they would still end up finding something – my discomfort in their town, my left-wing libertarian values, my promiscuity, my inability not to question absolutely everything. My family are good people, but rarely are they accepting of the plethora of differences in the individuals that comprise the world’s population.
What am I supposed to do? Move back in? Put a Conservative sign on my front lawn? Get my hymen surgically re-implanted and cross my legs until marriage? Lie to anyone about anyone in the hopes that it will reveal my inherent superiority? Talk about divorce as though it were worse than death*?
Don’t I wish I could think so little.
*“Divorce is worse than death” is my grandmother’s slogan.
