hey, I have a heart after all

Well, after much introspection about the fact that I was not effected by my aunt's death....I was effected by my aunt's death. I got quite melancholy yesterday afternoon. The good news is that I am not the tin man, I have a heart. The bad news is that I can not figure out why I care. I did not care for my aunt at all, she was (as I said in yesterday's entry) a taker. She stood for pretty much everything I am against and was the catalyst of continuation for the culture which I grew up in and have tried so hard to put behind me. So, why am I sad at her parting? I do not regret the strained relationship. I do not regret the arm's-length dealings. I am just sad that she is gone.

Now is the part where I have some revelation which leads to clarity....

hmm ....

I am waiting! Nope, nothing.

I have no idea why it matters to me that this woman is not with us any longer. I would like to say that my theology of death brings remorse for her rejection of my faith...nope. I would like to say that I am sad for the possibility of future growth and reconciliation ... nada. I would like to say that my soul bleeds for anyone...okay I couldn't even finish that one with any semblance of sincerity. The truth is that I am not that nice, not that caring. I want to be, but I am not.

This is not to say that I am unemotional. My wife would be quick to point out that I will cry at a mildly touching commercial. And I am very moved by a paasionate tale of heroism, or love, or crisis. Maybe I can not understand my emotions in this because I have so trained my mind to be skeptical of anything relating to my family that I can not even accept the reality of her death. As my cousin said yesterday, everything in our family has a hidden cost. When he called to tell me she was dead, I had a horrible thought enter my head. "How did she fake this?" Yes, I actually thought that. It would not be beyond my aunt to fake her own death for either sympathy or cash. But too many people saw her, she is really dead. Yesterday, I paid her the most fitting tribute I could imagine, I used her death to get out of a meeting I didn't want to go to anyway. Yes, I was in no mood for a meeting yesterday due to all the calls and the issues relating to her death, but there is no denying that I still could have attended the meeting. In retrospect, I think she would have liked that I did that. She was an unbelievably gifted manipulator. I pray it does not become a habit for me.

family

My aunt Carole was 14 when I was born and 12 when my brother was born. She was our usual babysitter and in 1969, at the ripe-old age of 16, she married a man returning from Viet Nam. His name was Gene. They were probably the closest family we had growing up and at numerous times in my early years, I was sent off to live with her, either alone or with my brother. When I was six, my cousin Greg was born and has been like a brother to me for his whole life. Darin, Greg and I played together and have fond memories of many a Christmas spent in some apartment or other in Los Angeles, waiting out the arrival of Santa. My aunt once hid a tape recorder under our bed on Christmas Eve, only to have the three of us find it and decide to put on a performance of Christmas Carols and stories into the microphone.

As I grew up, I resented the influence of my Mom's family. They were all liars and criminals, unable to know the truth, much less tell it. I grew up visiting them in prison on the weekends and hearing of their conversion to Christianity everytime they would be locked up. After I became a Christian, this offended me even more than before. Because after their release they would return to their ways, their grift, their scam. I never knew the truth of my family because it was transient. Truth floated about and only solidified if it was needed to make a story stick. But this was not truth, it was just another self-serving "reality" to make them feel better about the things they did.

A few months ago, my aunt sent me a letter heavy-laden with guilt about how we (this time the we was my brother, one of my uncles and myself...whoever had money) needed to help pay for my grandmother's expenses because Carole was dying and could not take care of Granny anymore. My aunt has 'suffered' from any malady which would contribute to her happiness and pocket for the better part of 25 years. She, being an intelligent woman, would study all sorts of medical books and claim she had been 'diagnosed' with whatever the new disease was. It was always a disease which not much was known about. As with all the other family stories, it was the unverifiable scam. It sounds almost reasonable, almost true, almost real. But it never was true. So, I joked about the letter she sent me and said it started "I am the former president of Nigeria," a reference to the well-known scam emails which the average american has received 2.3 times in the last 5 years. I was so angry with her for trying to scam me again that I refused to reply, to even acknowledge that I had received it.

I got a call late last night. Greg, having not heard from his Mom in three days, kicked in the door of her house and found her face down on the floor. She probably died of a heart-attack. She was fat, she was a heavy-smoker and she did not take care of herself. I don't know, maybe this time she really was sick. It doesn't matter, she is gone.

I am left with a feeling of sadness, but not regret. I feel sad for my Mom, who although just like her sister, is still my Mom and I love her. I feel sad for my cousin, she was all he had. But, the one thing I seem to be lacking is any feeling of grief. I feel like a granite-hearted grinch for with the passing of a woman who had a significant hand in raising me, I can not bring myself to be sad at her parting. I do not regret not talking to her, not responding to her email, not being more a part of her life. My aunt was a taker, but like most people she was not all bad. There was a spark in her which helped to keep family members in contact, everyone was in contact in one way or another with Carole up to the day of her death. She would open her home to anyone who asked and had a very short memory of wrongs suffered. I always attributed this to a monumental self-involvement which would not allow bad memories to surface. But, maybe she was naturally forgiving. I don't know, I never will. Say a prayer tonight for my Mom and Greg, they have nothing to rest their souls on in this time of grief and I fear for their psyche.

Good night, Aunt Carole. Thanks for watching me as a kid, for taking me in as a teen and for forgetting wrongs suffered. I promise to tell your story for the rest of my life, how could I not?

Graciousness

So, it has come to my atention this week that I am totally incapable of accepting a compliment. Well, I can accept it so long as I modify it with something along the lines of, "weel, no" or "its not very good" or "I didnt like it." I seem okay with the statement that one enjoyed my performance but not with a subjective assessment of its merit (only if the critique is bad can I accept it). This concerns me because it was referred to as false humility, but I don't think I agree with that. It is a very uncomfortable thing to have someone say they like your performance, your writing, your art. I think most people are being polite and have not really gone into an in depth analysis, and I have no real need for people to be polite. I would like to think that, if they were being sincere and I knew it, I could say thanks without so much difficulty.

I have avoided Church drama for most of the last 15 years for two basic reasons. For one, Church drama usually sucks donkey poop and sucks fiercely. It is less art and more propaganda, too one-dimentional for my taste and generally stunningly poorly written. The second reason is that I really like appreciation, adoration and applause. I like it too much. I receive too much joy from applause and laughter and it concerns me because it makes me feel like an idiot for being so moved by it. The psychological determinist might point to the lack of affirmation I received in my early years, I don't know, I just love it. I drink it in and it makes me self-conscious that it miht peak its ugly head out when someone says nice things to me in person. Maybe that is the false humility my friend was talking about. It is not the lack of comfort with praise but rather the fear that someone might see how much I like it.

Since I have mentioned it, I feel the need to explore why church drama, and many arts within the context of church, suck the poop. I think the main reason is that we are under the most unfortunate opinion that our art needs to have a point and sway others to that point. I don't have a problem with works which do have a point, but I think good ones rarely started that way. We don't have all the answers folks and creating art which assumes that we will be able to give the answers is silly. While each of us is created in the image of the True Creator, and so each of us has the ability to create, we are not given the answers to any and every question in the universe and when we try to answer fully a question which is hanging in the ether of our culture, we tend to do so poorly. (wow, that is a long sentence) However, I do believe God inspires people to great works which can lend a spectacle into the truth of a given issue. The difficulty seems to be that we TRY to do so.

While we are on the subject, and unless you wish to hear an earful from me, do not say "you're telling a story" when you mean don't tell a lie. Don't say something is a fairy-tale or myth when you don't believe it to be true. This only shows your ignorance of story, fairy-tale and myth. We have replaced the concept of accuracy with the definition of truth. A story can be totally inaccurate and completely true. Fairy-tales and myths are considerably better vehicles to explain ideology and virtue than cold hard facts ever will be.

I guess what I am trying to say is choose accuracy over politeness, but choose fairy-tale over accuracy. Hmm, not very consistant I guess, so I will opt to live with that tension and I will try to be gracious and say thank you when I really want to tell you all that is wrong with my performance. Thank you for reading.