Define:Family

My aunt—my mother's youngest sister—died last week. Betty was 88 years old. She leaves Mother with only one sister, who is bedridden with Parkinson's and probably will not live to see 2010.

When Molly called to tell me about Aunt Betty's death, I felt no remorse. Our family has always said that Mother was the sanest of the four girls in her family, and we think maybe Betty was the least sane. This was a woman who, over the course of her life, alienated every member of her family except my cousin, Betty Jo, who was her namesake.

When FOMC and I were newly married, we lived in Madison, WI, where he was getting his Master of Music degree. Before I arrived after our October wedding, he had lived with Aunt Betty and Uncle Charles for a month or so. Two weeks after our wedding, living in our new apartment, in shock over being married, virtually penniless, with no home phone, I received a visit from Aunt Betty, who raked me over the coals for not calling my mother for the previous two weeks. My explanation that we had no money and no phone didn't hold water with her. That was the last time Betty ever spoke to me: October of 1971.

Through the years I've learned of other family members receiving long, angry letters from Betty, telling them how horrible they were for whatever faults she perceived them to possess.

Betty had made some amends with Mother over the past year or so. They occasionally spoke on the phone. But there was certainly no feeling of closeness, of sisterhood, between them or the other remaining sister.

Now, maybe I'm driven in my yearning for family by my having been adopted. I don't have my "own" family, so I want the family I have to be close and caring. I don't feel I have ever found or achieved that in my nuclear family. My mother is the most critical and rigid-in-her-standards person who was ever born; my daddy was absorbed by his work. No one spoke. Meaningful conversations were nonexistent. My brothers and I never learned how to communicate. In fact, Jim and Molly's long and loving marriage is entirely due to Molly's determination, when she fell in love with Jim, to turn him into a real man who could communicate.

It seems my brothers and sister-in-law and I are becoming close now, as we're all almost-60 or over. We're united in trying to keep tabs on Mother and make sure we're aware of her condition. And we all banded together during Jerry's recent heart problems. It feels really good to have that unity-of-purpose that has been missing throughout our lives.

Maybe that's the definition of family: unity of purpose. I have that, I believe, with Tyler and Jaci. I live to make their lives easier, to help and support them as they raise their children. I have said over and over again that I'm extremely lucky to have such a wonderful daughter-in-law who treats me with respect and gives me the freedom to help out in any way I can find. Our unity of purpose is their raising of a healthy family, one in which people care about each other and talk to each other.

Scott/T.J. and I are not as close, but I feel certain he knows I support him in his life, that I would move heaven and earth to help meet his needs. And I feel certain his feelings for me are reciprocal.

So it took me over 50 years to find and participate in a family. At least I have that now. Better late than never, huh?