Unedited, as you’ll notice.
There is a classic Roseanne scene in which Jackie, Roseanne’s sister, attempts to gently deliver news of their father’s death to an elderly relative who can’t understand what she’s saying. Her agitation builds with each failed repetition and she coarsens her language and raises the volume of her voice until she’s shouting “Dad’s dead! (Beat) He’s dead! (Beat) No, dead! DEAD! (Beat) He’s fine, he sends his love!” That’s what talking to my mother about anything of emotional consequence has been like in the year since Tom drew division lines down the middle of our family and pressured our parents to take sides.
It’s not a new phenomenon — it’s been at least 25 years since I’ve felt like my mom gives my deepest feelings more than a second’s thought. But our exchanges are easier now, less fraught, largely because our lives are different. Our contact is minimal without a family group chat to connect us; we haven’t lived near each other for year or worked together for even longer than that. We’re considerably older (and allegedly wiser) than we were when the onset of Felix’s illness consumed our family, and our approach to each other is less oppositional than it was then, a change that was quietly and very gradually facilitated by a mutual acceptance of our differences.
Giving each other the benefit of the doubt and granting clemency for past offenses paid off more often than not until recently, when Tom chose to exploit our troubled past for her own benefit.* Since then it’s been harder to avoid conversational landmines than it’s been at any time since the Dubya administration. Mom’s recent estrangement from Youngest Sister pushed her off the deep end, and after testing the waters and realizing she was as closed off to other viewpoints as she’d been in the early aughts, Crankenstein and I were mostly quiet when she sent us texts agonizing over this unnecessary drama. She didn’t actually want to understand why Youngest Sister felt the way she did; she wanted to vent and for us to listen, which was easier to accommodate.
Then came a night in April when accommodation wasn’t as simple — her take on the situation was too detached from reality. I tried to explain as succinctly as possible why Youngest Sister felt exasperated, ignored and disrespected, and said that I understood where she was coming from because Tom had spent almost a year relentlessly drowning out any noise she didn’t want our parents to hear. That went nowhere — it was like talking to a wall — so I made one last effort and communicated something I would’ve rather kept private, believing it had the potential to cause a minor impact. After saying that Tom was sabotaging their relationships with us and they were allowing it to happen, I added:
I’m on the fence about even sending this due to the spectacular stupidity of the situation and my belief it will all get back to [Tom], who I’m willing to tolerate but want nothing to do with. I’m sick of all of this — I’ve had my hands full with Parkinson’s, a disability hearing, and the decline and death of my closest friend while this childish, vindictive crap has eroded our family. And I don’t bother sharing most of it with you because of [Tom’s] nastiness and omnipresence in your lives.**
The response was, as the Internet would say, *crickets*. Her venting continued apace and she never acknowledged any of it, even though it contained the kind of details she normally lives for. I thought of that yesterday, when she complained for the hundredth time that she never hears from me anymore. I could’ve told her about the confusing Medicare booklet I’d just gotten in the mail and asked about Dad’s recent experience in selecting the right plan(s), or laughed with her about Tuesday’s embarrassing fall. We could’ve had a serious conversation about how difficult it is to be physically disabled and have a perfectly able-bodied spouse who can’t help with 98% of the things I need help with because of ‘Niles.’ There are so many things we could’ve spent the past 25 years talking about, never mind the past six months, if it wasn’t easier to wrap things up with a frazzled “He’s fine, he sends his love!” instead.
* I’m not sure it was a deliberate choice. Despite Tom’s longstanding belief that her astrological sign makes her criminally cunning, I don’t think she’s particularly diabolical. She’s done selfish things, including exploiting a similar rift between Mom and Youngest Sister, because that’s what selfish people do, and our parents have enabled it because that’s what enablers do. It’s a remake of a movie the three of us sisters all saw before and uniformly hated, with Felix in the leading role and our parents the supporting players. But Felix was a severely mentally ill teenager and Tom’s a sane adult, which makes Felix’s Not-So-Excellent Adventure play like Shakespeare compared to Tom’s Bogus Journey, which is more like The Room.
** Youngest Sister had admitted by then that she was upset when I gave Tom a holiday gift, revealing that Tom had been saying “disgusting” things about my illness — presumably that I deserve it or that she hoped it killed me — that had separately sickened both Youngest Sister and our mother. I was disappointed in Tom after that but not surprised or angry in the manner of Crankenstein. She was acting small because she felt small, which was her problem more than mine. She was probably more shaken and devastated by this Parkinsonian turn of events than anyone in our family and I think she chose some really stupid coping mechanisms that spiraled beyond her control.