30 Something

I got a voice message on last Thursday. It was my little sister asking me to call home. I didn't get the message until after I left work, so I called home then and my mom tells me, "Charles died." Huh, what? Charles? All of this was going through my mind. I think the brain goes through a serious of mental blocks and stumbles when bad news is heard. I then said, "Charlie Reed?" and she confirmed that it was my cousin Charlie Reed who had passed on Wednesday night. I didn't know Charlie Reed very well, he was my second cousin. His sister, Toni, and I were more close. We went to high school together. Charlie Reed was closer to my mom's and my aunt's age. He was 41 or 42 (the cover of the obituary had one date and the inside had another date). For a long time Charlie Reed was sick. He had diabetes at a young age and it wasn't the kind that could be managed by what he ate. Charlie Reed was always thin. He then had kidney failure and was doing dialysis at his home. I was told that Toni couldn't reach him by phone so she went by his house and found him. He was gone when she found him. I assume that his organs failed him, but I didn't want to ask. At first I was reluctant to attend the funeral. I love my extended family dearly, but they can be mentally draining. The last couple years that I've gone home my aunts have always greeted me by saying, "Oooh, Tay u've gained weight." Oh, Thanks. Not that I need you to tell me that I'm fat. I've also harbored some ill feelings towards my extended family since I've grown up and moved away. When I was younger I lived with my grandmother (not my whole life, but periodically). My aunts, Trennia, Barbara, and Gloria lived there also along with my grandfather and uncle Dwight. It never occurred to my why my aunts never moved out. I guess neither of them really had the financial means to move on and start their own lives. Neither of them had men either, with the exception of Gloria. She started dating a man about 8 years ago and they had a child. I'm not sure where her baby daddy is today. As long as I've known him he's been an alcoholic and a hustler. I always thought that it was ironic that Gloria always talked about the man that my mom married, but she ended up with a guy who was worse, in my opinion. Which leads me to the reason for the contention with my family. My mother was a teenage mother. At the time that my mother had me, my grandmother and one of my mother's aunts were pregnant and had children. So my second cousin, Toni, my uncle Dwight, and I were born in the same year. Because of this my mom became the black sheep of the family. My grandmother often told her that no man would want to marry her because she had children out of wedlock. She would often be called a b*tch and a slut by my grandmother also. I'm sure my grandmother didn't bite her tongue while she put my mother down. I believe that's the reason that my aunts would also talk bad about her. My mother decided that she wasn't going to let my grandmother be right, so instead of marrying a good man, she married my stepfather. He was an alcoholic. He also smoked weed and probably did other drugs. My mother said that she married him to prove to my grandmother that she could find a man that loved her. She said that she didn't really love my stepfather, but he loved her. The married was anything, but successful. My stepfather would often be incognito for weeks at a time after he would get paid. It was the same thing every once in a while, he'd find a good job, usually as a cook in some restaurant, he'd work for a couple of weeks and then on a Friday he'd get his paycheck and we wouldn't see him for weeks, sometimes months. Of course when you are younger time seems to be so much longer than when u are an adult, so it may not have been that long, but that's what it seemed like. When he was around the air would change. There was a different spirit in the house and I didn't like it. I began to hate him being around. I figured we were better off without him. But my mom always let him come back and it seemed like each time he came back she'd get pregnant again. Today I have 3 sisters and 3 brothers. I think my stepfather, has maybe 9 children, excluding me and my sis, Nana. So that's 5 with my mother and 4 with other women. Our lives were miserable growing up. We were the textbook poor family, welfare, cheese lines, public aid health care, unlivable housing, poor health. I hated it, so I was determined to not live that way. I also hated that my family--my grandmother, my aunts, and uncle always had something bad to say about my mom. Never an encouraging word, always something to tear her down. Not only was this done in my presence, but it was done in the presence of my friends. I remember my freshmen year in college I brought a friend home with me. Before she came I warned her that my family always talked bad about my mother. Sure enough at the kitcen table, who was the topic of the evening? My mother. At that point I was so disgusted that I decided that when I got my own place I didn't want anything to do with them. That became the case when I moved to Decatur. Whenever I went home I would visit my mother, but I rarely visited my grandmother's house. I only did when she found out that I was in town. At that point I would have to go to her house because she would make me feel guilty because she was the one that took care of me and even paid the down payment on my first car. I was grateful to her for that, but I still thought that she was wrong for the way she dealt with my mother. So I guess this long story is to explain my trepidation when visiting family functions like get togethers, and funerals. There's not much that I like to discuss with them. So when mom told me that Charlie Reed died, I immediately said that I would be home, but later on I was backing out of it. I did'nt want to see my extended family. However, at the last minute I decided to go and hopped on a train and went home. Instead of staying at my grandmother's house like I would do years ago, I stayed at my aunt Margaret's house. I was so happy that I did because my extended family wasn't there. My aunt Gloria has been really sick so my aunt Barbara had to stay at home to care for her. Apparently Gloria is really sick. I believe that my family thinks that she doesn't have long to live. She not yet 40, but has diabetes, is morbidly obese, and had to have a defibrilator put into her heart. When they put the defibrilator in they said she died and the doc's had to keep reviving her. She's never took care of her health. When she was told that she had diabetes she didn't eat right like the doc's told her. She'd actually eat worse and then use her insulin as a crutch. When she got pregnant it got worse. That's when her heart problems started. My uncle Dwight didn't go because he had classes to go to and my aunt Trennia didn't go because she had to work. Gloria took Charlie Reed's death really hard because he was so young and they were really close. At the funeral, all of my grandfather's brothers and sister's were there. They were their to support their sister, Anne Mae, Charlie Reeds mother. I was so happy to see them because I hadn't seen them in a long time. The funeral was really nice and Charlie Reed looked really good. It was still sad that he had to go so young. After the funeral I went with my aunt Margaret and her son, Philip (my cousin) to dinner. We took my baby sister along with us. We had a really nice time. I then got up early to take the train back home to get ready for a wedding.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 03, 2006 at 10:24 AM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.