Familial Loyalty (Part II)

This is the second part of my posts on Familial Loyalty. For the first part, go here.


K, on the other hand, is completely insane. I'm no psychologist or psychiatrist, so I can't give a clinical diagnosis. But I definitely think there's something wrong with her in mental terms. First, some background information.

K recently lost her job. By recently, I mean about a year and a half ago. Before that, she was living in a nice house in a nice neighborhood. She has two children (boys, entering sixth and fourth grades), and they absolutely loved the neighborhood and the house. She continued living at that location for several months after losing her job, but eventually her water and power was shut off for non-payment. At that point, she moved back into my house with us.

(By "my house" I mean my grandmother's house. My father and I live in the basement apartment; there's two bedrooms, a bathroom, and a kitchen/living room combo. On the ground level, there are three normal sized bedrooms and a larger, "master-sized" bedroom. Also, a kitchen, a dining room, a living room, and a bathroom. Currently, the three smaller bedrooms are taken up by my grandmother, her sister, and my father's older sister. The larger bedroom is being occupied by K and her two children. Needless to say that space is at a premium in this house!)

This isn't a big deal. Whenever any of my father's siblings are down on their luck, the offer exists for them (if there's room) to move back in here. It's how the family works.

It is, however, a big deal that K is (understandably) angry with the world. You see, she is angry with the economic situation (and other aspects) that forced how out of the job field. She is angry with life because she has to grow up and be responsible (perhaps for the first time in her life). I assume that she is angry that she didn't follow her dreams and play college softball. She is angry at her husband (separated, not divorced) because he turned out to be a loser. She is angry with men in general because she seems to be unable to pick a non-loser man to share her life.

Oh! And she's angry with the school system. The local school system, the national system, the collegiate system.... All of them! Some things happened with her children and the particular school she was at wouldn't listen to her side of the story. That's wrong. It really is. The school system (or at least a few individuals within it) failed to do its job properly. That's a problem. But she has irrationally blamed the entire school system in our area and pulled her children from school. She is going to homeschool her children. This (in my opinion) is not an option. For several reasons (I see another blog post coming up!).

Regardless, she is so angry and upset with the world that she takes it out on anyone who will listen. Almost every conversation with her turns towards one of those subjects.

Although I haven't mentioned it yet, I aspire to teach high school English in a few, short years. I'm also male. That's two strikes against me (in her book). We came to verbal blows on the matter of the school system one day, but I left with the moral high ground (I walked away after we both started yelling).

The point I'm making is, we simply don't get along. And I think it's okay to stay that way.

To answer the question posited in my previous post, no. No, I don't owe this aunt anything. Not in terms of loyalty or respect. Nothing is owed to her that isn't owed to the average person. That is, I'll treat her with the dignity befitting a human, but no more than that.

I don't even give her the respect due to one's elders because she doesn't act her age. Hardly! (I can, of course, provide more information if it is requested.)

Familial Loyalty (Part I)

Here's something that's I've been thinking a good deal on lately. How much loyalty does one owe ones family? And I'm not just talking about one's immediate family (i.e. the people who significantly raised one), but also one's extended family.

Those who raise someone definitely deserve a certain level of loyalty (although this should be blind) because they have given freely of themselves in order to make sure that one is a grown human being. They have enabled one to grow up, in whichever manner they see fit. Perhaps they've made some mistakes, but all parents do. Perhaps they made more mistakes than someone else, but no one is perfect. While one shouldn't blindly follow the advice of one's immediate family (particularly one's parents and grandparents), one should definitely take it close to heart and make sure that said advice is an option.

But one's extended family is different. (Note: I'll be using generic terms throughout here such as "aunt" and "uncle" and the like; if those particular labels happen to fit into your personal immediate family, replace them for something more fitting to your circumstances. I'm writing about my own experiences and my own unique situation.) One's extended family has had an impact on one's upbringing and on one's life, but it is insignificant compared to one's parents' and grandparents' impacts.

So, how much does one owe one's aunts and uncles, particularly if those aunts and uncles have largely been absent for the majority of one's life? What does one owe them that one doesn't owe to the vast majority of people?

In my personal case, I have two aunts who have brought this question to my mind. The first is an aunt I'll call D; I did not meet this aunt until I was fifteen or sixteen. (In case it hasn't been posted elsewhere, I'm now nineteen.) The second of these aunts I'll call K; I've known her for as long as I can claim to know anyone (the beginnings of my consciousness), but she is a special case that I'll get to in a moment.

D, as I mentioned, was absent from my and my immediate family's lives until approximately four years ago. Maybe a little more or a little less; the dates are fuzzy in my mind. To frame her and her age, she is my mother's paternal aunt. She is roughly sixty-five years old. I honestly don't know the entire story (and personally don't care all that much), but from what I've gathered she had been living with her then-husband quite happily until he left her for another man. Also from what I've gathered, she had essentially abandoned her childhood family for this husband's for a few decades.

D is annoying. And this is not my sole opinion. My mother agrees with me on this assessment. My mother's father does as well. As does my mother's grandmother (D's mother). D is now living with her mother and helping to care for her. My great-grandmother (D's mother) is eighty-four years old; she has difficulty moving around, and she doesn't like being left alone.

D is annoying because she is always sick with something or other. She does have some conditions which keep her in some level of pain at all times. But she constantly complains about being ill or about taking pills. Or about her food allergies. From what I've gathered in talking to her, she is allergic to everything except bottled water and air.

So, here's that question: do I owe her anything (even in terms of love or loyalty)? If I do, I certainly don't give it to her. I cannot love her because I don't know her. As for loyalty, I give her the respect that is deserved by one's elders. But I don't go out of my way to please her.

I'll close with an anecdote. I went over to their house the other day in order to see my great-grandmother. I make it a point to visit her at least once a week while I'm in town. When I'm not in town, I make it a point to visit her as often as I can. She's eighty-four, as I recently mentioned, and I want to make sure that she feels loved and that she knows I love her. You see, her husband died two years ago. Since then, a good number of people in the family have stopped coming to see her. In fact, when I was over there just the other day (I believe it was Thursday), D told me that, of the grandchildren and great-grandchildren, only her two sons come over. Well, her two sons and me. She said that.

That got me thinking. I think the reason that the others in the family don't come over is quite simple: they don't want to deal with D. Of course, they're busy. Who isn't? But they could make time to visit their grandmother and great-grandmother. Perhaps they really don't care about her, but I think that to be highly unlikely. I think that they just don't care to put up with their aunt and great-aunt.


I realized how long this is going to be, so I decided to make it two posts. Please read tomorrow for the follow-up about my other aunt, K, and how I feel about a different scenario of extended-familial loyalty.