Originally Posted by
juicefree20
Marv & Jill,
Thank you for your responses. While I somewhat understand the point that both of you are making, let me give another viewpoint.
Now it's truly stated that while one can choose their friends, they have no choice as to who comprises their family. Furthermore, they can't control how their family members treat them, nor can they control how their family members turn out to be. Very often, it appears as though your biggest enemies often are people who share your bloodline.
Before getting into Michael or anyone else, I'll give you my own personal experiences with so-called "family" members.
I have family members who while trying to pass, had their own family members either visit them after sundown, or if earlier than that, had them come into their homes NOT through the front door, but rather through the side or rear entrance.
Yet another family member, an aunt whom had moved out of town was visiting [[unbeknownst to her SLIGHTLY darker brothers & sisters) & was riding the train with her children & a sister who remained here in N.Y. Quite coincidentally, my mother & sister happened to get on that J train a mere few stops away. My sister who hadn't seen this aunt in years looked across & noticed her & my other aunt & brought them to my mothers attention.
This "aunt" who grew up in the same house that my mother did, this same "aunt" who once came to our home when we had parties & things as such, DID NOT introduce her sister & niece to her children as their cousin & aunt. In fact, she didn't want her kids to know that they had a aunt & cousin whom were obviously black.
Yet another aunt had a child, a child that she cast aside, giving him to my grandmother to raise. When the child was about 3 years-old or so, the child went up to her & called her "mama". She hit the child in the eye with a wire rack, pointed to my grandmother & told him, "THAT'S your mama".
She NEVER treated him right, not even when he went to Vietnam & at no point, did she ever act like his mother, nor as an aunt to her darker hued nieces & nephews, which meant just about all of us. At no point did she ever treat us as an aunt would treat nieces & nephews. Hell, she treated some of her own brothers that way & according to her, my mother set the family back 50 years due to marrying an obviously black man.
And this woman had absolutely no problem moving into our home in St. Albans with her sister, her obviously black husband & their 3 children. Until she purchased her home in Flatbush, circa 1965, after which she had no further need for association, thereby continuing her her delusion that she wasn't just as black as the rest of us were.
In one of those crazy twists of fate that life often deals out, the very same son whom she had rejected & denied for more than 50 years buried her just a few months ago. Despite all of the years of treating him like nothing, her husband died years earlier, leaving her by herself because frankly, she never developed any relationship with most of us. And the only folks who wanted to deal with her had already died.
So once she began deteriorating from the ravages of Alzheimers, guess who ended up taking her 3,000 to his California home & along with his very Black wife, both ending up taking care of her after 60 years of treating him like garbage?
Worse still, yet another aunt decided to sue him after his mother died because somewhere along the line, this sister who she DID NOTHING to help despite also living in California, once promised her 25% of her estate once she died. Adding further insult to injury, a few short years earlier this same aunt who decided to sue him was suffering with breast cancer.
Guess who helped her out when she was on the balls of her ass, going so far as to come by to make sure that she was attended to, giving her money, driving her to doctors appointments & when she recovered, actually GIVE her a car, his wife's car with the approval of his wife? Guess who helped her out years earlier when she was unemployed for years & actually had her living with him when she was down on her luck?
And the thing is it's not as though he was trying to rip her off or to get over on her. He was simply trying to get the house sold in a depressed market, but it wasn't moving fast enough for her.
Ironically, the aunt that died got that home in the mid 60s & the first time that I ever was in that house was just a few months ago when I went there on my cousin's behalf in order to make sure that whatever remained was either thrown out, or placed into storage.
Not even in death did was that barrier to her home removed, as I merely made it to her former garage.
I offer these experiences not to bitch or moan or because I feel the need to engage in online therapy. I only offer this up to illustrate that although many of us have a lot of opinions about what SHOULD be, or how we THOUGHT that things work in the lives of others, very often we offer these opinions with exactly ZERO knowledge of how things actually WERE.
We may THINK that we know exactly what goes on in families, but often times, we don't even know the half of the story. Come on, how many people do you know of whom if you hear them tell it have this perfect life with perfect kids & perfect spouses & perfect families, only to later learn that all of that was nothing more than camouflage or a lie?
Every smiling face isn't a happy one & if walls could talk, the stories they could tell. None of were actually there, but Michael was. I doubt very seriously that he did anything based upon some insane vendetta against his family.
However, they know better much more than you or I. But if recent events are a fair indicator, then that speaks volumes more than any of our speculation.
And it doesn't paint a very flattering picture
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