Family is weird. There really is nothing like it, that first primordial group we are born into, or moved into, or find ourselves in. You ever go home to visit and it feels like no time has passed at all? Like, even though the buildings may have changed, and surely you have aged, but it’s still like…you dropped down into this memory-history-time loop all while existing a little bit outside of it?
I did a Masters degree in Applied Behavioral Science and much of the focus was on Family of Origin systems. I’ve written a little bit about it, and I was far too young to have been doing some of that work (not academically, but in my life-cycle). I understand why most of my cohort was 15 to 20 years older than I was. Because there is some RICH family of origin work to be done during your mid-life crisis. Or it causes it. Or you heal from it. I’m doing a lot of that right now, and boy howdy is it fun.
(sarcasm, but also not to distance myself, it is very valuable)
My family of origin was out of time-sync by the time I was born. My mother was 41, my father was 56. My siblings, born from my father’s first marriage, were 25 and 30 when I was born.
In the picture above, my father is about 57. I’m now 55. I’m just gonna sit with that for a second, because when I look at that picture I will never be older than that baby.
My father died when I was 8 and my family was thrown into a total maelstrom and my sister and brother (truly half siblings) were very close to my mother and my father, in ways I never could be. Some of my Family of Origin (FOO) work at school was making sense of that out of order history. Seeking some kind of closure, that probably just couldn’t be closed. My mom was a very independent and stoic, “what’s done is done” kind of gal, and my degree required doing a “what’s done should be dissected” family of origin interview and y’all, she did not want to do it. And she tried, but it was very very fraught.
She was pretty wounded.
I got a text today that my sister Carol Ann was in hospice, suddenly, and not doing well. I called her husband and was able to say goodbye to her, though she wasn’t conscious. Others were able to be there and say goodbye in person.
She died soon after I called.
I’m left feeling so strange about family. How sticky and ghostly-time-travelley-super-sonic-loopy it is, like you can be here and now, and then there and then in seconds, and at the same time? Feeling your now and then and the forever before that lives in our very cells.
In our cells. Family. Maybe not ties that bind, but cells that survive, witness and act as a personal emotional memory Tardis.
It asks me today, this magical dynamic to think about what family actually means to me. My niece, a wonderful woman who is actually older than I am due to the strange sibling order, said to me, “You’ve gone through so much in your life, and back then. Hard core painful stuff. You’ve had to endure a lot in your life and I’m glad you have a loving family.”
It’s strange to hear someone validate the hard stuff, because I think one of my defense mechanisms was a) to find the fun and b) think I was just being a baby cause other people had it harder. I do have a loving family and I am damn grateful for it.
Trauma, y’all. We all have it. It’s all hard.
So this is my day today and the day of my sister. She was a deeply spiritual person, an ordained Episcopalian deacon, and cared deeply about her faith, her family, and her community. We had a distinctly different kind of family, the Gillises with all of us standing in the family legacy of music and ministry. Her legacy was of ministry, my brother’s of music and love and I will miss her and I wish I’d had more ways to have known her.
A hard day today, but look how happy we were, back in the waaaay past. Hold the ones you are close with, close. Be kind and have grace with all, for you never know what someone is traveling through.
My condolences Julie, it is hard not to be able to say goodbye. I didn’t know you did that kind of masters degree, love to talk to you about sometime. Good therapy for both of us, Love Jane