Blood Bonds

"Remember your Creator in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble come and the years approach when you will say, 'I find no pleasure in them'." 

Ecclesiastes 12:1

Question: Explore your relationship to grief. What was the last time you allowed yourself to feel it? What were you grieving, specifically? What did it teach you? What is it teaching you now?

Today I cried. I was sitting at my desk wrestling with an assignment and I cried. This past weekend my cousin got married to a beautiful woman. I wish I could speak to how lovely the two of them are and speak to memories I have of my cousin, but I can’t. So I cried. 

I grew up feeling a strong sense of loyalty to my family, a deep love and devotion that sticks in through thick and thin not matter how negative I feel.  I have a deep devotion for my extended family, sadly there is a fact I can’t ignore. I do not know my family. I have this whole group of people that I know by name, but not their stories and I am related to them. There is something wrong to me about sharing a name and blood, but not knowing who a person is. 

I cried and I let myself grieve not knowing my family and the sad fact that I probably never will know these people beyond the highlights of their lives. Maybe my grief is an only child thing, I desire to know people and be known in return. Or maybe I just want to go to a function and not feel awkward and out of place among people who are in my family tree. I think the only family member outside of my parents I had a bond with was my Nana. I never knew everything about her, but I knew more about her beyond the superficial. I knew her heart and experienced the beauty of her spirit. I cried. 

Another reason to cry. I do not think my Nana would like the state of our family. We don’t talk or celebrate all together beyond the occasional wedding and those lovely memorials. Holidays and family vacations are not in our rotation and to be honest they went away long before my Nana died. It makes me question what family is and why my family is the way it is. I look at other families and they make each other a priority, they share big news at least through an email, and they talk on a semi regular basis. Why don’t we do that? I honestly don’t know. I have suspicion. 

What am I learning and what have I learned. Well I learned I really want to discard my family, but I can’t. Not just because it is wrong to jump ship because of how I feel, but because I can’t not leave my family behind even though they feel like they already are. I am still really bad at reaching out to people, that fact hasn’t changed in a matter of days. Maybe if I was better at it, but then a relationship takes two, but then if I tried maybe there would be a relationship. I like to stay hidden, but yet want to know and be known. It is a puzzle that I do not even completely understand. Maybe relationships require sweat. Maybe my tears are not a cry for connectedness, but a reminder that if I want something I have to work at it and devote time to it. 

Maybe my family just doesn’t have time for each other. I think that is sad, even in the midst of all the Facebook happy news I see from my family and the things we have each been given in our marriages, additions, and new chapters…it is still sad I can’t know them yesterday. Or I won’t know them. Or I am not meant to be known. Or maybe blood is just blood, till you accept the relationship that exists through it. 

Family is complicated and beautiful, and it is something I find myself grieving as I celebrate and lament. I don’t have memories, inside jokes, or know their favorite colors and foods. I want to know my family and that is why my tears fall. 

- Hannah