Vague Weirdness

 Last night, I said goodbye to my younger Sister and my Mother for what will almost certainly be the last time.  My sister had moved to Virginia about a year ago, and yesterday flew in to get her Mother, who will be living next door to my Sister in Virginia.   I am very unlikely to ever travel out to see them, nor they here to see me.  My older sister had been living with my Mother, but I don't know where she is now, and will probably never see her again, either.  In fact, I have not seen my older sister since a few days before my Father died, 10 years ago.

 So, this is where a normal person with a normal family would be talking about all of the tumultuous emotions stirred up by this seemingly dramatic moment in time.  Instead, I felt nothing, feel nothing, except a vague worry that there must be something wrong with me because I feel nothing except a slight sense of relief that these are people I no longer have to feel obligated to visit, or guilty about avoiding.

 The final meeting was short, yet hard to fill with words.  It felt exactly like any of uncountable other unenthusiastic family encounters of the past. If anything, it was notable for being less annoying than previous meetings.   I don't know which is malfunctioning more, myself or my other family members.

 For many years, my Mother knew how to find the most sensitive spots in my psyche and poke at them and make me want to die.  Over many years I gradually built up my internal defenses until I was immune to being hurt by anything she said.  My younger sister and I have some negative history, felt almost entirely by myself alone, related to incidents that happened when we worked at the same company.  Time has dulled dulled those memories and emotions for me as well, and I don't think she ever really understood what had upset me back then, just over 20 years ago.

I'm not even sure why I am writing about this except that it is a curiosity, and oddity about myself and my family that I don't understand, and I don't understand why I am not more bothered by it.

A few months ago, when my cat died, I cried uncontrollably and at length on the day it happened, and again when I received her ashes and a ceramic postmortem paw print from the veterinarian.  I still cannot bear to look again at that paw print.  Living with these creatures, my cats and my Wife's guide dogs, means living with a lot of loss, and I think I had been suppressing a large portion of my grief over several of these, but for some reason this last cat was one too many innocent and loyal lives lost.

When my Father died, I did not cry.  I didn't even go to the funeral because I had been in such conflict with my older sister regarding his care in his final weeks that I didn't want the negativity between us to distract from the dignity of the ceremony.

Why so much emotion for animals and so little for my parents and siblings?  

To be clear, I do care about my wife and our children, and our grandchild.