One Year

Sunday marks one year since your passing. I wonder if you’re looking down and wondering how it all went so wrong or if you’re surprised it took as long as it did for us all to fall out.

I’ll be honest, I love you, but I’m still mad as hell with you for what you left behind for us to deal with. I wish you had been man enough to deal with your own mortality, instead of sticking your head in the sand and pretending you were going to live forever. I wish you had taken off the blinders you wore when it came to your youngest, and realized you were leaving your wife in the care of a narcissistic drug addict, and leaving the rest of us powerless to do anything about it. I wish for once you had stood up to your youngest, made her grow up and stand on her own two feet, and take responsibility for her actions, the way I have been made to do.

Instead you ignored it all.

Now I have no contact with most of one side of my family. I realize I lost my grandmother, your wife, the day we received the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s, but the day you died, and left her in the care of your youngest daughter, I lost my grandmother, as well as my grandfather, for good. Your youngest was never made to be accountable, and when we, that is my mother, sister and I, asked her to do so, we were cut off.

So here it is – your dying wish was that my mother and her sister not fight. The unspoken wish was that my mother roll over and play dead. Allow her sister to continue to do what she wanted, regardless of the consequences, now unchecked with your passing. Fortunately, my mother had the wherewithal, with the support of me and my sister, to stand up to her, your youngest daughter, and not allow herself or her family to play a part in that play.

I’m proud of my mother, but I can’t say I’m not angry. I’m angry it had to come so long after it started to play out. I’m angry you didn’t face up to things, and accept that my grandmother, and you for that matter, needed care. Maybe you’d still be with us, maybe my grandmother would be slightly better off than she is. Maybe your youngest daughter would be a better person, not the pill popping, money grubbing self centered brat she has become, and may have always been.

We’ll never know.

Sunday marks one year since you left us. I love you and I miss you, but I’m angry with you for the mess you left behind.