Referred to this in the 1000th post; I’ve always been a little puzzled and disturbed that my Mom and sister have made this blog the primary interaction they have with my family. I guess that’s my fault for even starting the blog in the first place but it damn sure doesn’t say much about how they have bothered to interact with the boys or Suzanne and I. News reports work for them I guess….
Having Dad pass away has exacerbated this situation more than a little bit as they have instantly become more interactive about things. Melanie, who hadn’t talked to JWH for damn near 30 years before he passed all of a sudden has a list of things she wants and disapproval of what I am leaving behind. Mom definitely does not like what I’m posting on the blog now even though I can tell from the blog tracking she has more than a passing interest in some of the photos I post. The JWH post before this one is the only one where anything specifically referring to her shows up; it is the only post that will happen in because there aren’t many photos Dad had that are left to scan in. Where I thought the next time I talked to Mom I’d get the full scoop on those photos I instead got an email that ended with more ‘complaints’.
So, I turned the blog ‘off’. Only open to invited readers. That’s the end of that.
If I had wanted to embarrass anyone, God knows there’s more enough I could have posted here over the last month that would have proven more than sufficient. The total debacle of taking Mom to Pittsburgh to, supposedly, check out Dad’s house to see if she wanted to live there. Totally skipped that day when discussing the most recent trip to the ‘Burgh. Dad had saved the last contact with Melanie, a birthday card she sent him long long ago. Hadn’t brought that up here, even though I saved it when I was told specifically to “throw that in the trash” when I mentioned it to Melanie.
It won’t go in the trash because it is ‘history’. And my thoughts on history have morphed over the years….especially as I started and continued to do this blog.
Because why do I do the blog? Not for either of them (even though they are, or were, the most frequent visitors to these pages). Mostly it was for me, it is as close to a hobby as I’ve ever had. Over time I’ve convinced myself that I do it for the boys also……they seem to enjoy the books I’ve printed out and seeing the pictures and reading the descriptions. The blog has turned into a history of them, and well, with Dad’s passing, the history of him has come to life. It hasn’t been flattering because well, it’s not flattering. Even in what I’ve written so far I haven’t been as truthful as I could be about it. But when you die alone and there is ony one family member you speak to on any kind of regular basis, well, that speaks for itself.
The primary lesson I have for my kids is to not be like my family. At all.
