Despite every other entry of mine of late that doesn’t have to do with TV, I don’t really watch that much, has to do with Facebook, I’m not really there very often. I grazed Facebook for like two minutes today to find that my ex-sister in law died today.
I know it’s hard to tell the players without a scorecard. It was easier when fewer of them were ex. I’m talking about my brothers first wife and the mother of his daughter, my neice. I know that still doesn’t narrow it down for prose box. I’ve been less forthcoming here than I have in other journals. Of all my sister in laws ex or not, she’s the deceased one.
It seems like every time I go on facebook someone is being born or dying or absolutely nothing is happening to anyone (discounting who got a pig for Farmville as an actual event. I like pigs. I have no opinion about virtual pigs or even Farmville. If I had ever played it I’d feel comfortable calling it stupid. I do know sending out a message to your 8000 fake friends and three family members that you just got a fake pig for your fake farm is some kind of breech of etiquette though).
I don’t mean to make light of her passing. Wait, I do, but not out of callous disregard for human life in general or hers specifically, I just don’t want to make dark or maudlin of it and death is one of those things that doesn’t lend itself well to casual in-between small talk. It’s not the thing that sucks most about death, but it is on the list. Everyone who has inappropriately laughed at a funeral has that bit of suckage a bit higher on the list. No, hey, no need to raise your hands, this is like radio, I can’t see them, but we all know who you are, um, who I am.
I knew her fairly well. Considering she was three quarters misanthrope, for a while I ranked fairly high on her list of people she could almost stand, maybe even like in a crisis. Given all her mental health and substance abuse issues over the years she fit the profile of half my friends and all of my own wives. Sort of like my little sisters ex (same issues) we probably would have been good friend if she and he hadn’t been so shitty to my siblings.
I have no idea how she died. Hmmm, I cheated a bit earlier in this entry. I made it sound like I scratched my nuts and cruised facebook. Heh, I played varsity baseball, nut scratching is mandatory whether they need it or not. My daughter texted me and asked how she died. So I went on facebook where, I assumed and assumed correctly, my daughter had gotten the news. She, of course, was looking for inside information. It’s not that weird. The neice and I used to be really close, I mean we’re still close, but not like when she was a kid. Next to asking her uncle (um, her being my daughter, uncle being the ex sister in laws ex) I’d be the most likely one to know. I don’t. I’m not sure if my daughter ever met her cousins mom, I mean the deceased one. They were separated before I was from my daughters mom and she was only four when that happened.
My modern day daughter might have appreciated the deceased, I’m not sure my four year old daughter would have. What me and the deceased had in common, in the early days, is that we both wrote a lot of poetry, and, with brutal honesty, didn’t hate each others stuff. I might have described her to my daughter though because when I suggested it might not have been illness or an accident my daughter said that was her first thought too. Honestly I don’t really know. I hadn’t seen her in almost fifteen years.
For a decade or so whenever I visited LA I would have to/maybe sometimes want to, go visit her. Usually I was dropped off as no one else wanted to visit her and she only asked to see me. You know the album art on the cover of Jethro Tull’s Aqualung? She always reminded me of that. If you don’t know it you should look it up. Maybe you should listen to a few songs off the album too. I’m not a huge fan, but that was an iconic album.
I’m sorry for my niece’s sake. She’s had a really shitty year. Yes, a shitty calendar year, but also a shitty twelve months, a niece year. I have no idea how my brother took the news. I mean if I were him I’d have a hard time figuring out how to take the news. I’d also assume, if I were him, that it was an accident or on purpose, though if she had a lingering illness he would have known. Given the state Sunny was in when I last saw her and all the emails I got that first year from her friends and family asking either where she was or what her fucking problem was, I was expecting to get the call of her passing. Passing, seems like the wrong polite pretension for being hit by a bus or hit a double dosage or a razor in a warm tub. I don’t recall ever figuring out how that felt, but, you know, as far as I know she was alive at least a month ago. Trying her absolute damnedest though, Sunny was never as crazy as deceased ex sister in law and too vain to take suicide ideation past the idea stage. But, she was, um, is, more reckless. Yeah, typing more about it doesn’t sort out the feelings.
If I had to pin down the feelings at the moment vis a vis Sunnys demise, I’d be pissed at her timing given all the failed attempts to get a signature for divorce in absentia. I’d probably feel shitty about being pissed though.
With my brother if he had that conflict I’d be glad to remind him why he divorced her. With my niece it’d be trickier. In her mid twenties she made valiant and mostly successful attempts to reconcile her feelings about her mom with her mom. Um, bits and pieces of it were like a a dual of narcissism, but, I love my niece and she did do the gorwn up thing and it worked. As my daughter pointed out it would really suck to have a parent die while there were still unresolved issues. I’m counting “I hate you you crazy bitch” as a resolved issue. Things are rarely that simple. Also I think every teenage girl has said that to her mom at least once probably with the added (in context) irony “I wish you’d just die”.
A few years ago my daughter went through that stuff only she sort of took short cuts. She just forgave her bat shit mom and deceased bat shit grandmother. She had this kind of mantra summery sort of thing that went a whole lot like this “I know they suck, but I love them”.
Her mom actually mellowed anyhow which made that mantra seem magical. Her grandmother mellowed out a lot too after she died.
This entry is why I’m waiting a few days before calling niece. I need to get my head right. No, that won’t happen, I need to get my voice right. I am genuinely sorry for the grief she is going through, and I didn’t hate her mom, I kind of liked her, but I kind of liked her from a distance, I mean I liked her when there was a thousand miles between us or when we spoke about words and not people.
All of you on facebook? If you die I am so haunting your after life and I will travel to your grave or ashes or med school corpse and piss on it. No dieing. Seriously. In fact the pissing on prematurely dead proseboxers should be in the rules. Again, put down your hands, we all know who you are.
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