Sibling Time

I'm the eldest, in the middle, with baby sister on my lap, surrounded by my four brothers.1959.

We come together from 4 different time zones every Sunday afternoon and have been doing this for nearly 6 years. We never miss. We tune in from cars, from parking lots, from beaches, from cabins, from little nooks in our homes away from everybody else. We are siblings.

The conversations lasts for hours. You'd think 6 people would have run out of topics, out of conversation. Some of us quietly get served dinner or lunch or a snack by spouses or grandchildren who tiptoe away quietly knowing this is a sacred, private time for the 6 of us.

We were six siblings, now we are 5. We lost our third eldest in November last year from cancer. It broke us all for a while. So 5. We changed the name of our group to his name.

We go on Zoom religiously for this weekly meeting and check each other out, talk of health, talk of childhood, talk of memory and challenges. 

It was fairly uptight when we started, little deep or personal sharing but as the years swept onwards, there are no holds barred and often we go on our private WhatsApp during the week too if things are getting a bit rough with one of us. We are carrying the fifth born of us at the moment with a rare form of cancer he has been diagnosed with. He had an operation last Friday. 

We have the odd political disagreement but are secure, very secure, in the knowledge that we care deeply for each other and are there through thick and thin.

We don't talk about how extraordinary this is. But we have said to each other we have come a long way in getting to this place of peace and love and harmony. Something that would have been impossible to imagine even a decade ago. There were mini-alliances within our sibling framework and a lot of petty infighting and yes, jealousies and failures. Magic like this doesn't happen. It is work and consciousness and someone breaking the mould of silence and secrets.

But we did it. We now trust each other without reservation. And look out for each other in thick or thin.

I feel blessed.

Grief

Many of long time readers will know that I went through grief-counselling some years back when my physical health began to suffer and my doctor of the time referred me to this amazing grief therapist. I had lost 8 close friends in the space of 18 months and the symptoms of my grief were not what you'd imagine as in crying all the time or depression. No, I was wound tighter than a drum with my blood pressure soaring through the roof and my tricky kidneys beginning to fail.

I was with the therapist for a 6 months of weekly sessions and he was incredibly understanding. He passed on much wisdom to me. One was when you suffer a severe heart breaking loss it opens up all the other losses in your life once again. Yes.

Well reader, I am there. All the chickens, so to speak, are home to roost now. My missing daughter's birthday was last week and that compounded everything, all the losses.

I tried to track down Peter, my grief therapist today but failed. I will try again. He was, I think, older than I. My siblings appear to be all cheerful and getting on with things so I find I can't/won't attend the weekly Sibling Zooms. I can't handle cheer. A friend dropped off a poinsettia and a fresh caught salmon yesterday and I could barely thank her but cried like a baby after she left. Kindness does me in.

I light a candle for the last photo taken of my brother every day and talk to him, hoping I'm not going right off the ledge.

I have delayed reaction to loss and I am hoping with Grandgirl staying with me by the end of the week I will climb out of this pit as it is affecting my overall health. I'm constantly nauseous and exhausted and not fit as we say out here.

The fact I am writing all of this down is a good sign, n'est pas?

Any shared stories of grief would be appreciated. 

I feel massively alone.

Post Mortem Explosions

Eye catching title, yeah?

But, big but, this is exactly what happens in families after the death of the last parent.

Two friends, within a very short space of time, have lost their surviving parent. Both parents had lived full and interesting and long (90+) lives.

So fine and dandy, lovely services, eulogies, songs from the grandkids, flowers, both were smiley kinds of funerals and even involved simultaneous broadcasting to the far-flungs in America and Australia. Oh, the wonders of the e-world. Long may it continue.

So there you go and the dust settles and the earthly bits and pieces and bank accounts and all things: built, gilded, diamonded and chinaed of the dearly beloveds are divided up and tied with a ribbon and dispensed.

Oh, not so fast there.

In the first case, the sole heirs, a brother and sister, are joint executors. But it turns out Bro had had his father sign a power-of-attorney and had been pillaging the estate for years prior to the death. So there wasn't much left. Sis had suspected some financial shenanigans but when the spoils were finally divided she (an accountant by trade)finally confirmed the mountainous level of the embezzlement. So what does one do? Sue your only sibling through a welter of legal costs she couldn't afford? Call the police? No, she took her measly cheque, pondered the options, and let it go along with the resolution to never, ever speak to her brother again.

In the second case, the mother had willed that her estate be divided evenly between her six children. But a sibling had been living in the family home and now refuses to leave. My friend, single, getting on in years herself and with very little in the way of financial reserves, needs her share of the money that the sale of the family home will give her. Sibling has emptied the bank accounts as co-signer of the deceased mother's bank accounts ("for ongoing household expenses"). One of the other siblings, a solicitor and the executor (conflict much?), sides with the squatter. The other three don't want to "get involved" and as privileged males "don't need the money."

My friend is reasonable, has told squatter-sibling that they can remain in the house for a reasonable length of time (a year or two) or buy her, my friend's, share out either solo or along with the other siblings. Squatter has managed to save a substantial sum by living rent-free with mum for the past 10 years - claiming government subsidies for mother care along with a monthly cheque out of mum's account and working part time for another sibling.

Squatter-sibling has now severed all contact with my friend and has threatened suicide if "tortured" by these demands any further.

Neither of my two friends have the financial resources for lawsuits.

All this is par for the course. My own family of origin had its own Hiroshima after the death of my father. And there are still occasional reverberations all these years later.

Much as we try, nothing is ever clear cut and amiable in the brutal finalization of death.