We do visit with my aunt, and the lack of relationship her children have with her family makes her sad, and she has remarked, if she could do it over again, she would have insisted the children come and have relationships with the others. I honestly believe if my grandma had lived, my dad’s side of the family would be different. Sometimes it is the mother who is the glue to the family. It has been 37 yrs since my grandma died, and for a while we continued to have family gatherings, but after the situations with my two aunts got worse, the family became a little more distant. My grandfather passed away in 2003 from pancreatic cancer, and since then family gatherings have become non-existent.
Another social Influence is that Margaret and Piquette both have male figures in their lives other than their fathers. Margaret has always had her grandfather and after Piquette got sick, she had Vanessa’s father, who was the doctor that cared for her. “Your dad was the only person in Manawaka that ever done anything good to me” (Laurence 9), she says to Vanessa after her father passed away. Also, another example of a social influence is when Vanessa never cared for the loons that were at the cottage until after they had left and her father had passed away. After Margaret’s father passed away, she says, “I hated him for a long time, even after his death.
My brother was useless as it was too much for him to handle and my mother allowed this behavior from my brother. There was no time to argue about it, so my sister and I spent the time with dad to make sure he was taken care of during such a difficult time. Throughout the year was a difficult time for the family as we all grieved differently. My mother felt very alone and grieved alone by isolating herself from the family. My mother did not realize that her children had lost their father and that we needed our mother in our lives.
As I grew older, however, I began to resent my compliance, and, rather than trying to change my attitude, I turned my anger to my sister. I became a simmering soul; the slightest word or smallest action could trigger my bad mood. I was annoyed at my sister for her sheer luck at being born later, and I was angry at my parents for letting her become what I saw as a ruthless child. I was relentless. As a result, the times my sister and I spend together became especially cautious on her part.
It upsets me that all the blame was put on my grandmother and never on my grandfather because he was the man of the house. When I was younger I always wondered why my grandmother never left my grandfather but when I spoke to her about what she went through, she told me she couldn’t leave because she had no way of support herself and all the children she had. I also felt sad about how my family treated other people from tribes that were different from our own. Before moving to New York, I did not have any contact or knowledge of the LBGT community. I now have more understanding of who the LBGT community are but I am also still learning.
Being my dad, the contact stage in our relationship began quite long before I remember. However, our involvement stage did not reflect the average father daughter relationship. Not long after my birth my father became a recluse and had no true involvement in my life. Partly based on the fact that we did not have a traditional family, as we did not have a shared living space. Often times though, he would blame his lack of involvement on his low self-esteem.
Our family was never close but we didn’t care. Nobody thought one day things might be different. All of that changed on September 20, 2014 when a hostile argument ended with the death of both my aunt and uncle. For years their marriage was falling apart. My aunt was very materialistic and wanted my cousins to have whatever they asked for but in reality my uncle knew it was impossible financially for them to achieve this.
It’s been four years since my father left us. He disappeared off the face of the earth without warning, leaving my mother and me to fend for ourselves. Now, to be completely honest here, I never really developed much of a bond with him anyways, so the separation between us has had only a microscopic impact on my life. Even so, there are things that I wish I could know about him; after all, he is still my father. Unfortunately, my mother disagrees; she always disagrees.
When he passed away my grandmother’s grip to reality was gone. When I lost my grandfather, I also lost my grandmother. My friends at school did not understand what I was going through. They would say “at least your grandmother is still alive” and all I wanted to say was: “Yeah, sort of.” None of them could have understood what it was like to have a grandmother who couldn’t remember who you were. My family never realized how much my grandfather was my grandmother’s base to reality.
She knows that her heart has a “hard little place that could not feel love...” (Lawrence, 750). In order to cover up this flaw she pretends as though she loves her children so the other parents within her social circle believe that she is a great mother. This artificial love manifests itself in the form of expensive gifts, servants, and a nurse (or nanny). However, in the privacy of their own home she is cold and distant from her children, and they know of her stone heart. Despite being briefly mentioned, the knowledge of t... ... middle of paper ... ...tunate and wealthy through some type of hardship or quest.