Bitchin...

Strong Language Advisory: 
Warning- the following blog post is an angry rant, and contains strong language, including the 'F-bomb' and various crass and crude turns of phrase. If you have a problem with that, don't read on. I make no apologies. You have been warned.

After a steady decline for a couple of weeks, Mum went into hospital on Monday of last week, for some symptom management, and will be coming home tomorrow morning. During this time, I took the opportunity to go home to Myrtleford for a break, as I mentioned in an earlier post. I returned to Sydney on Monday evening, and of course went straight to the hospital. It was great to see Mum looking so bright :-)

Tuesday morning, as I was having breakfast and preparing to go to the hospital, the phone rang. It was one of my cousins. I can't remember the last time I would have seen or heard from him (and I'm talking decades here), and likewise, Mum (who is much more diligent in keeping up with family than I am) also hasn't had any contact with him in ages. Both of his siblings have been in pretty regular contact with Mum over the years, and especially since she's been sick, but not him.

So imagine my surprise to answer the phone and find myself speaking to this cousin, but not only that, but that he had the temerity to commence the conversation with: 
"I came to visit on Saturday, but nobody was home!" 
I replied with: "Yes, Mum is in hospital, and I went home for a few days' break."

At this point, things started to feel a bit surreal.
"Yes, I found that out from the neighbour."

"Well, why didn't you ring before coming all that way, to check that there would be someone home?" 

"I was just concerned about my aunty, and wanted to see her".

(This cousin lives in Mt Druitt, which is quite a hike from North Ryde, and he seemed somewhat annoyed that he had made the trip in vain, as if it was somehow our fault that we weren't home when he came. I found out later, from talking to his brother, that he had apparently sat in his car outside our house for an hour and a half, thinking we might have been out shopping or something).

At this point I felt like screaming at him, "How dare you blame me for your own fucking stupidity?! You haven't been in touch with Mum for so many years, and now suddenly you decide that because she's dying, you want to see her, and don't even have the fucking decency to check with us that it would be convenient for you to visit, knowing how sick she is!? What kind of person travels that kind of distance to visit someone without even contacting them to say they're coming? That's just rude. Plain fucking rude. And now, you're annoyed with me?!?!?!" *

(And even if we had been home, given how Mum was feeling before she went into hospital, there was a good chance she wouldn't have wanted to see him - and he wouldn't have been the first person that I've had to turn away from the door because Mum wasn't up to visitors).

It was almost as if he was wanting to be able to make a big deal out of the fact that he'd travelled so far to visit his dear old aunty... but in my dark place, I wanted to compete with him in this pissing competition he created. ("You want me to be impressed that you drove for an hour or so to visit Mum? Well, I've put my whole life on hold for six months or more, and moved myself interstate so I can be here to care for her and stand by helplessly and watch her die slowly and painfully. So I win. My dick is bigger than yours, and I'm not even a man."**)

This came hot on the heels of a phone message that was waiting for me the previous night, from a different cousin, saying how concerned she is for 'Aunty'. She and her husband had been to visit Mum not long after her diagnosis, but Mum hadn't heard from them since, and has commented on her puzzlement at this a number of times. So this was also a bit of a bolt out of the blue.

For a while now, Mum has been making dark mutterings about how all these relatives that have never bothered to be in touch normally, have suddenly been all over her now that she's sick; and it seems to me that she resents that a bit. I had always tried to talk Mum through this resentment, and point out that it's natural that they would want to be in touch and try to express support for her under the circumstances. 

However, after these two phone interactions, I have also started to feel angry and resentful, because it feels like these two cousins are expecting Mum and I to be at their convenience; as if it's our role to meet their needs to feel good about themselves because they've 'made the effort to see poor, sick Aunty'. 

I'm angry; really angry. And now I feel guilty about feeling angry and resentful (don't you wish you were inside my head right now? ;-). 

Am I a bitch? Am I being unreasonable to judge so harshly, and to not want to make allowances for the feelings and circumstances of these cousins? Is it unreasonable for me to expect them to realise that Mum and I already have enough to deal with, and they should be supporting us, and not the other way round?

I guess these are the questions that will cheat me out of sleep in the next little while.

Families are funny animals, that sadly, don't always bring out the best in us.

OK, angry, sweary rant is now over, and we return you to normal transmission.

* Of course, I didn't say any of this... but really wanted to. 
** Again, I didn't, and would never, say this, but by golly it felt cathartically good to write it.