Member-only story
Leaving Your Family 101
It’s Not As Easy As It Looks
I stopped speaking to my mother completely about a year before she died. Years before that, I had ceased contact with my brother. He and I managed to bury our conflict when our mother died, just long enough to host a funeral and then once again go our separate ways.
I cannot even count the number of people who have told me that what I did was wrong.
“But they’re your faaaaamilyyyyyy,” people decry. “They are the only family you’ve got,” say others. But here’s the thing: they were my family, and they are not the only family I have. Not by a long shot. Going all the way back to the birth of my first son, who is now 28 years old, my mother behaved less maternally and more like a distant Aunt. When I phoned to tell her I was in labor, slow labor with a couple of hours likely before I’d go to the hospital, and likely several more hours until giving birth, she hesitated. She decided that since it was nearly 5pm, she would wait until the following day to depart. The next day, she left at noon — NOON — and stopped for a light meal along the way, turning a 3.5 hour drive into a 5 hour one. That added time, plus finding a parking place at an urban hospital, meant that she missed the birth of her first grandchild who arrived at 6:15 that evening. Yes, more than 24 hours after that phone call, when she was 3.5 hours away.
