So I guess to start this little Rhonda Ramble....
I'd have to be honest and start out with my 1st memories of my other Grams and Pops on my dad's side.
My memories of them go way back to when I was about 4 or 5 years old and being around them at that time is pretty vague but I do remember it.
Seems that after my younger bro was born..it was indeed quite true that what I was later able to verify...
my grams pointed to both of her youngest grandkids sitting side by side in their strollers and said "quote" yes...heard later from a couple of people who were there that day....
"That's my Grandson....the one on the left"
(when in actuality...they were both her grandsons)
Now...the real problem with that....as the years went by and a lot of wisdom later.....
the real problem behind that statement was not that both of those kids sitting in those strollers side by side were indeed her grandkids....
the problem was that her "Favorite child" up until very recently the one she always talked about yada yada yada....(My Dad)
well his wife had kind of gotten fed up with being told where and what and how to do things.
And a family falling out was just waiting to happen. Yep Yep.
So leave it up to that one comment to cause a break up that lasted many many years.
My dad...being one of the best men that I have ever known in my entire life....chose to be a husband and stand behind his wife and family.
In the years that followed my memories of my grandma and grandpa on my dad's side were only drunken phone calls ---them crying and Grandma D calling over and over and over and we didn't have things like caller I.D. back then.
In those days my dad was an auctioneer.
Grandma 99 was there a lot but this kind of thing we were not supposed to notice. And every now and then it was Grandpa H who would come up to us kids and be crying and sobbing and we were just like WTF? when we didn't even know what WTF really meant.
So flash forward to about the time when I was 12....
Momma found a new religion.
Lordy Lordy....
we kissed and made up.
And grandma and gramps had given up their so called "drinking games."
We met our long lost other side of the family again.
And at this time I met my Aunt (dad's sis who was several years younger than him) and her hubs and kids and was happy to meet and get to know new family members.
When I got older...found out more family history....
my aunt was actually preggers when she married her 1st hubby but for years Grams would tell the story that this certain person had abused her and beat her and "knocked" my oldest cousin out of her stomach which caused him to be premature and also cross-eyed.
Grammy...my dad's mamaw....knew the rest of the story....
and of course the whole family kind of ended up knowing it in the years to come....
but no shit....
I mean seriously
no shit
my pops was actually the one who broke the news to my eldest cousins' child (on dads' side of the family) that the one he thought was his "grandpa" was not his maternal one.
And pops talked to me after the deal went down and felt so bad about it because he seriously had no idea that no one had ever told little "R" that another person was actually his real grandfather.
And it was all so surreal.
Why didn't my cuz slick R know who his real dad was?
And his kids did not know anything about who their real grandpa was?
Why all of the secrets?
I mean gosh darn it..this was the 20th century and yes..women did get pregnant before they were married without being burned at the stake. And why the lies about someone "beating and knocking" a child out of my aunts stomach led to her marrying another man is another story. All I know is that her new husband was always nice to me and seemed to be a really decent human being with good intentions.
I do know that when I was preggers that my "aunt" came to my house and told me that her 1st hubby was the love of her life and that if grandma D would not have meddled that they would have been able to work things out and be happy.
That is not to say she did not love the man she was now with.
Everyone has regrets of what could of and should of and might have been if only "if"
Shortly after that we found out that my beloved "Aunt" and Grams had filed an eviction notice on my younger bro for not paying rent that month on a building by the way that my dad had spent all of the money and paid to "add on" to the other business.
Bottom line...the building would never have been there if my dad had not have built it himself.
And another fact...my younger bro went to pay the rent and my Grampa "H" told him and his wife to keep the rent money and to buy a present for their new baby "A".
But my aunt always received this money from the rent from the kart shop because her hubby was on disability and depended on it as income and had no idea that grampa H had told them to keep the money and it was just another one of those huge clusterfracks that lead to big problems when people do not communicate with one another.
My mom ended up saying that my aunt was such a back stabber that if she saw her laying in the middle of the street gasping for water that she would not give her a drink.
years later my Aunt told me that my Niece had told my Grandma that mom had said if she saw her on fire she would not spit on her to put the fire out but I told my aunt that was totally untrue....
that my mom had said she (My Aunt) was the backstabber and would never again consider helping her under any circumstances.
Dad walked away from a deal where hermie had promised him the properties when they passed away and said that in turn dad's Sister would get whatever money they had in the bank.
Dad left it all behind and said that if his sister was that greedy to act the way she did that she deserved to have it all..he wanted no part of it.
When we moved back to Bako I kept telling my mom to forgive forget you only have one family yada yada.
My mom was adamant. She held no bad feelings towards the children but said she would never have anything to do with a person who had stooped so low.
I kept telling her that dad's sis was always the jealous meddling type in this instance but just a victim of circumstance. And that there was always room for forgiveness---- I begged mom over and over to just let it go. Up until the day my mom died I begged her to just let it go.
Then I get the sympathy card from my aunt who said everything was my mom's fault and she was basically bad-mouthing my DEAD momma in the dadgum sympathy card.
Yeppers.... I went a bunch postal after momma died...
but today as I sit and look back on it....
if my aunt could have just said something nice
or minimal and not bad-mouthed my mom in the sympathy card she wrote....
things could and would have been so much different.
When she did that I felt like I would be dissing my momma if I did not defend her.
And because of that I now know even less of a family that I and my immediate family are not connected with.
And last week my one and only aunt has died.
I feel sorry for her family.
I do not feel sorry for me because I do not know now how to even miss her.
I do believe that at the end of the day there is a heaven.
And I am thinking that if my aunt went to heaven...
her and moms just might be up there right now working things out :)
I guess my Rhonda ramble about this whole thing is that...
if you think you have a problem...then
go straight to the source
and if you constantly have problems with certain people
then all you can do is consider the source and figure out
if it is worth all of the problems.
Peace ya'll.
In closing I would definitely say that I never had a sister and would have loved to have had an aunt that I had a real relationship with.
And any of ya'll out there having some sort of problems that a simple conversation might work out....
consider it before it is too late to work it out.
just sayin...
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