Some Traditions Should Be Done Away With

 

I know every family has secrets.  The healthier the family, the less there are secrets.  Ours is of the other variety.  The kind of great pretending to make things look a certain way no matter for whom it causes pain. 

Though I was told that my aunt passed, and I responded and wanted to know when the funeral would be, I was not told when and where my aunt’s funeral was until it was over.  This was no accident.  It is consistent with a cousin attempting to discredit me with the Bronx Council on the Arts and even risking her/his own license to do it.  S/he didn’t like what I wrote of my autobiography in progress.  It may be more than s/he can handle as that cousin is from the protected end of the family.  Instead of beginning to realize the emotional horror that took place for many of us at the other end of the family, this person followed the family tradition of deciding the truth-teller is crazy.  Here’s the very sad and disturbing part.  This person is a therapist of sorts. 

My need to be at the funeral was not factored in, I’m sure.  Anytime I have anything to do with the family I was born into, who I naturally loved, I go through so much that requires healing time. 

I wanted to believe I was going to celebrate New Year’s Eve in a festive way for the first time in several years, and I put the word out.  I want to thank Mindy Levokove, Anne Leighton, and Jackie Sheeler for welcoming me to join in their New Year’s plans.  They were all different and appealing, but I ended up choosing to stay home with my furry boy, Luigi.

In terms of loving and handsome and emotionally reliable, he takes the cake.

I had expected to feel differently than I did.  It was okay.  I’ll aim for better than okay for next time.

There’s much I want to say of the past year in terms of highs and lows, but my heart is a bit too heavy right now.  For a She So Funny blogger, I haven’t been funny in a while.  I am grateful to be part of this group of seven who, for the most part, are also real people with full existences and not the joke machines some think comics are, even some other comics.  We are fortunate when we can find the funny in not so funny circumstances.  When we can make others laugh with it, we’ve turned pain into art.

 

1/1/2013