Two weddings and a funeral

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Last night my wife and I met my aunt Ginny and her husband Jim for dinner at O’Connor’s.
As I’ve discussed before, I like my aunt much more since she found someone she loved and got married. It made a very noticeable change in her whole attitude towards life.*

My aunt and my mother have two brothers.
Thirty years ago, the four of them got into a huge fight over who would get my grandmother’s money when she died. The fact that my grandmother was not yet dead and would live another 13 years was irrelevant.
Up until that point, I was fairly close to my relatives on my mother’s side of the family. We’d see my aunt and grandmother almost every week. We’d see my uncle Jack and his family at least once a month. Depending on where my uncle Ted was stationed, he was still in the Navy at that point, we’d see him a few times a year or more.
My aunt, who has no children, seemed happy to have her siblings and their kids stay at her summer cottage near the cape most summers and I spent almost every summer growing up there.
The fight went on for years. Once it started the four of them had nothing to do with each other and would go to great lengths to avoid each other.**
In those thirty years there have only been three events where the four of them put aside their differences and all attended: My cousin Stephanie’s wedding***, my wedding and their mother’s funeral.

Of the three, my aunt Ginny was the most estranged. She was the one who got my grandmother’s house in the end, by buying it from her mother. Despite the fact she had lived there for decades, taking care of her parents when none of her siblings would, the other three thought it was unfair that she paid her mother less then full market price for it.
That is about all the other three agreed upon.

For the last fifteen or so years, my aunt and one of my other cousins have lived in the same town, about 5 miles away from each other.
On various visits to each of them, they’d tell me how they’d see the other around town and each felt the other snubbed them by not talking to them first.
They shop at the same stores. They go to the same church. They didn’t talk to each other for 15 years.

So, I was very surprised when my aunt said “Joanne and her kids came over to visit a little while ago.”
“Really?” I asked. “How did that come about.”
“Last fall I saw her at church and she invited my to Thanksgiving dinner,” Ginny said. “We had other plans and couldn’t make it. But, I invited her to come over some time and she did.”

It’s not much. But, it’s more then I ever expected.
I guess she’s even started making plans to meet up with my uncle Ted at some point.****

I don’t expect her to ever talk with my uncle Jack again*****, but it would be nice if 3 out of the four could start talking to each other again after 30 years.

Of course, I still won’t talk to my mother…



*Just for the record, I am not saying that women need men in their lives to make them happy or any nonsense like that. I’m saying that living your life without someone who cares about you can be difficult. And, when my aunt was alone she felt that no one did care about her at all, and that was reflected in her interactions with others.
I do think that it is very important that everyone have someone in their life they think cares about them. Man, woman, child, parent, sibling, friend or whatever doesn’t matter.
Ginny didn’t get that from her mother or siblings and didn’t have any close friends. That loneliness took a toll on her.
But, I digress…

** My aunt took care of my grandmother, living in the same house with her. The other three would do things like wait at the end of the road until they saw my aunt’s car leave before they’d go up to the house to visit their mother. Those of us in the next generation were often used as scouts to check if things were clear. For several years that was the only time I saw my cousins, and we didn’t get to visit.

*** My cousin Stephanie’s wedding was where my aunt and uncle Jack were kicked out of the Hanscom Air Force base’s officer’s club by some MP’s for getting in a fight and being too loud.

**** Plans complicated by the fact that my uncle’s wife Dorothy apparently refuses to leave the house.

***** After he threw the dead rat at her in 82 there was no going back for the two of them. (I have no independent confirmation of the rat flinging, and both have been known to lie about the other. But, either way, they’re done with each other.)