A Death in the Family

Fall semester: day thirty-two

I don't talk about my family much on here. I try not to, actually. I have a lot of extended family, and most of them aren't in my life on a daily basis, what with all of them living back home in West Virginia and Pennsylvania. Aside from that, my family tree has a ton of different branches from marriages and divorces, remarriages, etc. I have cousins I've never met, via blood or marriage, and those cousins have married and had children, etc etc. Of those family tree branches, there's my mother's side of the family (who I'm talking about, usually, when I mention my extended family at all here in the blog), my father's side of the family, which extends just as far and branches off into unknown miniature extensions, as I don't have a whole lot of contact with them, and my dad's family -- the extended family of the man who raised me, including my brothers and sister who aren't actually my brothers and sister by blood, but I look upon them the same way.

Yeah, I know, it's confusing. Keep with me here, as (you could probably guess from the title) there's a point to all of this.

My parents -- mother and father -- divorced in 1987. My father remarried in 1989. I was there; I was in the wedding. With his new wife, he soon had two daughters in 1991 and 1993, and a third daughter in 1997. After mid-1993 or so, my father cut off contact with me; I've spoken to him for less than an hour's worth of time in the past twenty years, and have only seen him in person twice during that time -- one of those times being at my aunt's funeral in 2001. In 2006, I had a brief instant-message conversation with him via my oldest sister's account, and told him that I was moving to the midwest. That was the last I heard from him, and the only conversation I've ever had with him in my adult life, for long ago I'd basically been "written off," so to speak. We don't have contact, I'm pretty sure his wife never liked me, etc. I don't know why, of course, to this day -- if there's even a reason at all -- why he cut off contact with me. Still, I tend not to let it bother me too much. I grew up, became a man, got my degrees, etc. I left it all behind me; it's in the past.

The shame of it all was that I got denied a life shared with my three little sisters while they were growing up. I am in somewhat regular contact with my oldest one, who is 22, and the younger ones knew of me -- the middle one I've talked to once or twice, and she's 20 now. The youngest one, born in 1997, I've never met -- though I've been told that she knows I exist and all that, and she's of high school age, so it's not like she hasn't reached the age of reason. 

Well, I should say she knew I existed, I suppose. And everything else about my youngest sister should be in past-tense now as well.

This morning, about half an hour before leaving the house to teach my classes on West campus, I got a slew of messages from my extended family back home on my father's side -- the four of those people I am still in contact with, anyway. Last night there was a car accident. My youngest sister -- only sixteen -- was killed. Speed was a factor, but that's all they know. And I'd never even met her.

This is, to say the least, a difficult situation for me.

One of the news channels back home (ever so tackily, of course) published a photo of the car. It appears to be my oldest sister's old VW Beetle, which (I can only assume) was handed down to my youngest sister when she got her license, as my oldest sister now has a Jeep. The top half of the Beetle is gone. The bottom half, what can be seen of where the roof struts meet the doors...it's covered in blood around the edges.

Yes. The news published a photo of my sister's car with her blood staining it. I'm not making this up. Zooming in on the picture? Yeah, it's quite visible. Everywhere on the edges, staining what can be seen of the interior (from the angle of the photo), blood covers the car.

No, I'm not going to share the picture here. It's bad enough that the news posted it.

I think I'm still in shock to a certain extent. It's a low-level shock, but it's there. I am quite logical and clear-minded in everything I do, even under duress, so I looked at it scientifically. The first thought that entered my mind was there's nothing I can do.

This is true, of course; there's not. I debated on canceling my class this morning (very briefly, anyway) before I realized that even if I canceled class, there was nothing I could do to help the situation. Sitting here at home alone talking to family members about my sister's death wasn't going to bring her back. Sitting here finding out more details about it was only going to make me feel worse. I had a job to do; my students knew nothing of what had happened, and I had lessons to teach and go over.

I emailed my mother about it to let her know, but I've not heard anything back from her yet. My mother doesn't know anything about the girls other than their names; obviously, they're not her children or anything like that.

My second thought was something along the lines of was she anything more than a name to me, either? And, immediately, I felt shame for asking myself that question. Yes, she's my sister. But I've never met her. I didn't know her. At all. I knew her name. I'd seen many pictures of her -- of all three of my sisters, I always thought she looked the most like my father -- but I'd never met her. When she was born, unlike my two older sisters (both of whom I was at the hospital for), I didn't know. I was told about her birth a few weeks, or months, later. I'd been out of contact with my father for years at that point, and it's not like social media existed in the 90s. Hell, the internet barely existed. I processed it. It was not my fault I didn't know her and didn't get to see her grow up. At this point I don't want to point fingers and put "fault" upon anyone. It doesn't matter.

She was more than a name to me; she was blood. She is blood. It doesn't matter that I didn't know her, and it matters even less now that she's dead. I may not be a huge fan of my father and stepmother, but I do have an incredibly heavy heart for them right now. Nobody should ever have to bury their child, obviously.

When I went to teach my class this morning, I told my students (only about half of whom were there) that if I seemed a little scatterbrained today in my teaching or in my lessons, this was why. All of them looked at me with shocked/terrified looks on their faces that I was even there in front of them.

"As most of you know, I am from West Virginia, as is all of my family," I said. "That's where she is. I can't do anything about that; cancelling class isn't going to bring her back, and there's nothing I could do to help the situation back home. That being said, for the moment I am pressing forward and will do the same job I always do on Tuesdays and Thursdays in this class."

And with that, we did move forward. I covered my lessons as admirably as I could given the circumstances, gave them the grammar quiz that I'd planned a week or two in advance, and dismissed.

"Are you going to be able to go back for the funeral?" one of my students, an older woman, asked me once the classroom had cleared out.

"No, I can't," I said. "I don't have the money to do so, nor do I have the time -- we're getting to midterms, I have papers coming in from all of my students, I start teaching my third class on the 10th, and while I'm sure my presence there would be appreciated..."

ahem...appreciated by *some* of the family...

"...I won't be able to go," I finished.

My car barely gets 20 miles per gallon, has 238,700 miles on it, and its shocks/struts are shot. It has a wheel bearing going out and occasional slipping of the transmission (depending on the day and the weather). It leaks coolant and oil at different intervals, interchangeably. I'd be lucky if the car got me east of St. Louis before it died or before I ran out of money for gas to fill it up every 200 miles or so. Plane tickets on short notice are exceedingly expensive -- an expense of money, and of time, that I cannot afford with an adjunct's salary or with the time constraints my job forces me to keep.

According to my cousins and aunt, they're making the arrangements for the funeral at some point this afternoon, and I'm being kept posted on everything going on through them. I sent my oldest sister a message this morning, telling her that if there was anything I could do to help to let me know. She hasn't read it yet. I don't blame her.

I've remained mostly silent about all of it; Rae, Daisy, and a scant few other friends know what happened, but it's not like I'm going to post all over Facebook about it or anything like that. Again, I'm a fairly private person. I burden no one with my grief, and don't want anyone to feel sorry for me. Feel sorry for her parents, feel sorry for her two older, surviving sisters, who knew her well. Yes, she was my sister, but I will grieve in a wholly different way than they will. I am both present and detached, sad and in shock but coldly scientific, all at the same time. Still, those who know she was my sister have been reaching out to me on Facebook -- mainly because the news story was cross-posted to a lot of local groups and shared between families and friends on there -- and I do appreciate it. Most of those reaching out to me don't even know me; they're friends of the family or they know my mother/father/grandmother/etc. One of my mother's teachers from high school reached out to me to send her condolences, for example. I've laid low because, again, I don't want pity or attention -- those feelings need to be sent to my sister's real family and friends, those who lived with her, who saw her grow up, who knew her. Her parents, her living sisters. I share blood with her. I knew her name. I have pictures. But as much as I wanted to be, I was never a part of her life.

I had a plan once, years ago. Once all of my sisters grew up, moved out, started lives of their own independent of our father and their mother, I planned to reach out to them much more than I have already. Again, my oldest sister knows me, and I do occasionally talk to her on Facebook. I wanted to plan get-togethers, meet-ups, and actually be able to spend time with them and be a brother to them. I refused to let my own experiences with our father affect the way I looked upon my sisters; the sins of the father are not the sins of the son (or the daughters, in this case). I wanted that relationship. I still do, with my surviving sisters. I love my sisters; I may not know them that well (or, in the case of the recently deceased, at all), but this doesn't change the fact that they're my sisters.

"When [cousin] called me about [dead sister]," my aunt messaged me this afternoon, "I instantly thought about you. I wonder if your dad will realize what he has missed with you. I hope so."

"I'll wonder that too," I said in reply.

It's no secret on my father's side of the family -- especially amongst my cousins, aunts and uncles -- that he basically tossed me aside as a son; it's the tap-dancing pink elephant in the corner of the room that nobody talks about. My mother's side of the family knows everything involving this as well, and have tried to talk to him about it from time to time (one uncle on my mother's side worked in the mines with my father for many years), yet to no avail. As for what my sisters know about me, or have been told over the years, from what my oldest sister told me a while back, it's very little. Yes, I'm their brother. I have a different mother. I lived with her after the divorce. Etc. Not much at all. I don't mind this, really; it's better for them than knowing that our father suddenly gave up on trying to have a relationship with his son.

Do I think my father will try to make contact with me after this, and/or try to patch things up? No, really I don't. Again, I'm not necessarily a fan of my father, but I don't really hold anything against him. He wanted a new marriage and a new life, with new children, and that's what he got. I had a lot of hate in my heart, a lot of resentment, for many years -- mostly as a teenager. But I grew up. I got over it. I stopped really caring. The only feelings I have for him right now are sorrow that he's lost his youngest daughter. That's all that matters. I should be the last thing on his mind at this point, and rightly so.

In the meantime, I must continue to go about my life as per the norm. No, obviously, I'm not happy about it, but again, there's nothing else I can do. My life and budget doesn't allow me the luxury of attending my sister's funeral, or seeing her lowered into the ground. My life doesn't allot time for grief other than what I've experienced already. I'm not grieving for the sister who died; I'm grieving for the sister I never had the chance to know, who never had the chance to have a brother in her life. And nothing can be done about that now.

Daisy will arrive this evening. When she does, I will put on my brave face and push as many sad thoughts out of my mind as I can in order to spend time with her and to spend our "anniversary" (Thursday) together in a way that won't bring us down or cast a pall on everything. My family back home will keep me abreast of the situation and will give me details on the service and/or everything else as those things come to light; most of them are going to my father's home this afternoon, and some of them are more than likely already there.  As for me? I must keep pressing forward, even if my heart is indeed heavy.