The perfect family Sunday, March 31, 2013

 

 

Big Pete's death tore apart my cousins last year. Last easter, I felt it when one of the girls didn't show up and the other girl seemed out of sorts. This year neither of the girls were there, and the boys seem not to be talking to the girls at all and vice verse.

They all put on a good front for years about they being a very happy family, the perfect family. Little Pete still believes this. But John, who is much more like me, knows better. 

I'm the one they all trust -- the bridge between my end of the family and theirs. I was nine when little peter was born so I got to see them growing up. Since their mother became my foster mom at times, we had a common bond.

I always popped into their lives at odd moments, often critical moments.

After their mother died, Big Pete went on for about five or six years with no other woman in his life. Then he met someone, who was also widowed, married her, and she turned out to be a shrew, who wanted Big Pete money and favored her kids over his. Pete's four kids moved out of the house and rented a house elsewhere in town -- where I met up with them. Eventually Big Pete also moved out -- giving up the old house to the shrew in the divorce. 

The four kids made it seem as if this moment bonded them, but actually for the girls, it tore the family apart. The girls never forgave Big Pete and held it against him all the years later.

Big Pete took their abuse, because he needed them.

When he got ill the girls and boys fought over how he should be cared for. The girls wanted to put him in an institution. The boys wanted to keep him in their homes.

Big Pete it turned out was a bad patient and did not handle the treatments well.

He made a lot of bad choices in his life.

One of the symbols of success was this house near the jersey shore where they family summered every year, after his death, it became a source of conflict, over which the family is still fighting. The girls want to keep it and continue to go to it in the summer. The boys say it costs too much to maintain and want to rent it out during the year.

One of the boys wants to sell it if they won't rent it. Sandy made it all the worse, and now the boys aren't talking to the girls, even though one of the boys lives next door to both girls.

What a mess.


email to Al Sullivan

 

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