Some Family Worries

I haven't been posting lately because I've had a lot on my mind. First and foremost, I didn't know where my mom was for six weeks. No one told me she was in the hospital. My sister is basically MIA and my brother's cell phone got cut off. So I kept calling mom several times per week for the past 1.5 months until I finally reached her.

::sigh::

My brother and sister are about useless.

So mom was in a rehabilitation center because her weight had dropped to 77 pounds. Now it's back up to 92. Her target weight for her height is 100 pounds. She did sound a lot better than she has in nearly a year. But I feel bitterness towards my brother and sister for being so useless.

Doug (my spouse) has to be away for a week soon. His mom is having a surgical procedure done on her shoulder so she will need Doug's help for about a week after the surgery.

It really seems like my family (apart from Doug and his mom) will basically cease functioning as a family once mom dies. She is the only thing that me, my brother, my sister, and my uncle Jimmy have in common. I have a seething hatred for Uncle Jimmy (he's a millionaire but mom has to use food stamps for groceries because he won't give a dime to his terminally-ill sister). My sister is a lying, cheating, money-grubbing sociopath that has never done a day's honest work in her life (she's done quite a bit of dishonest work, however, since she was a loan shark for a few years as well as a check forger). My brother... well... I just don't know what's the matter with him. He has an exceedingly high IQ, is creative and funny, but he can't hold down a job for more than a few weeks. We also don't have much in common since he is about 14 years younger than me.

So, it just seems that it is unlikely that any of the four of us will have any reason to talk to each other once mom dies. It's a shame. I really would like to have a family. I sure didn't have one growing up. Dad was a sexual sadist who showered me with ceaseless, withering derision. Mom was a raving, histrionic drunk. They both cheated on each other. They both used their children as living weapons against each other. I may be genetically related to my mom and dad, but they utterly failed to fulfill the role of "parents" by any reasonable definition of the word.

And so it really feels like I don't have a family in the traditional sense.

I am grateful, however, that I have family in the non-traditional sense. I am very happy that I have Doug in my life and that we were finally able to get legally married last year. I have Doris and Clint -- two very dear friends that are very much *like* family. I have a best friend named Jeff that is as close to being a brother as two unrelated people can be. My "real" family rarely failed to fail.

It's funny how life works out sometimes, eh?