Son Of The Lost

As you know, one of my crazy uncles passed a month ago, and I was somewhat relieved because he was somewhat of a mooch on my mother.

This uncle had a son — well, there is a boy who from birth this uncle had claimed as a son though no one in the family thought the boy was his actual blood relative.  Mind you, there are probably about a dozen kids out there who probably are actually his, but he has denied their claims whenever they’ve contacted anyone in the family.  However, this boy who looks nothing like anyone in the family and looks every bit 1/2 Native American (his mother was as Norwegian as you can get and we are Scotch/Irish) has my mother’s brother’s name plus “junior”.

So, this son and my mother had a falling out about 15 years ago when my step-grandmother was murdered, which is an entire story unto itself.  Needless to say that when wills are read, often families suffer schisms.  He said some really horrible words to my mother which she felt were unforgivable at the time and they didn’t speak until he called her to notify her that her brother was dead.  I haven’t actually spoken to him since long before that, perhaps since my grandfather’s funeral.  I don’t know that we had a falling out or anything, but our lives simply diverged and I had heard that he was following in the footsteps of his drug-addicted father so I felt it was best to keep away.

Anyway, apparently since his father’s death he’s been calling my mother and talking to her.  He’s been telling her that he had this terrible childhood and that most of it was so horrible that he’s blacked out much of it.  My mother is very upset that he doesn’t even remember the Christmas that his mother abandoned him and we went to get him and he stayed with us.  She’s very hurt about that.  She had wanted to adopt him then.  I remember it very distinctly.  However, her brother had gotten wind of the adoption plan and had come and taken his son away.  Now my mother is upset that she didn’t fight harder to keep him and adopt him so his life would have been different.

She’s started talking about flying him from Florida to New Mexico to visit next Summer.  She wants to make up for not being in his life all this time and it worries me.  This person is a grown up.  He’s only a year or so younger than me.  He has a girlfriend and an eleven year old daughter.  He is old enough to have started to make some important life decisions and definitely support himself and I’m concerned that he’s just going to take the place of his father and start holding out his hand for my mother’s checkbook.

So last week when she started talking about flying him out to visit next Summer again, I told her that I was worried about her; I told her that I thought that she should make his pay for his own ticket or at least part of the ticket.  I told her that he was old enough that if he really wanted to visit her and reconnect with the family that he could make the effort.  I told her that I was worried he’d just be another mooch like his father if she didn’t set boundaries.  I said, “Those are expensive plane tickets; I’m your daughter and you don’t pay for me to visit you.”

And she said, “But you didn’t have such a horrible childhood!”  Like that’s the defense.

She can’t possibly make up for the fact that her brother didn’t want her to come to the rescue of his son.  She can’t blame herself for that one decision when she did what her brother wanted.  She didn’t know.  And the truth is that none of us really know the total truth.  Neither father nor son has a particularly good history with honesty, the law, drugs, and family.  Though I admit, my mother does seem to be the exception and her brother seems to be the example of generations of deterioration, each a step worse than before on both sides.  I hate to say it and my mother would probably be horrified but her family sometimes makes me think of the de-evolution into trailer trash.  And yet you wouldn’t know by my mother.

I just wish she didn’t feel the excessive need to take care of everyone even at the detriment to herself.

Tagged as: childhood, death, family