What a Difference the Years and Years Make

Interesting... I'm on my way to San Diego early this morning for reasons that are very sad.  That, I am prepared for.  What I wasn't prepared for was the really rude, nasty, woman I had the unfortunate luck to encounter.  As I ponder how much mellower I have become with age I will use this vehicle here and in private to express what I probably would have said out loud and very publicly to this unfortunate soul if the same had happened years back.

I don't need to tell her how nasty she was but were I younger I would have and believe me I would have done it in such a way  that her mousy husband would have cowered in embarrassment because I would be publicly calling her out for what she is - an ugly, nasty, creature who's been given the face she deserves while obviously living a life without a semblance of joy (in which it seems she also deserves).

Let me describe the encounter.  While seating had started for my flight I heard the announcement that anyone with any disability may board.  Now I am a Silver Member (big deal) so I know I am somehow squeezed in BEFORE less frequent fliers but AFTER travelers with kids and service members.  Because I have a brace on my back which (thankfully) I don't have to wear all of the time I thought I might take advantage of this special extension for disabilities.  So....I got up slowly and waddled with all the elegance I could muster to the "grouping" standing at the silver entrance poles.

Apparently among this amorphous grouping this lovely gracious woman (I say with dripping sarcasm) decided that I stepped out of turn and in front of HER -- NOT something she could allow without comment!  At first she muttered (loudly) about it not being a"bus stop."  It took me a few seconds to realize her repeated (now louder) muttering was directed at me.  No one was moving yet and, I must point out, this was not a crowded flight.  I thought if I smiled politely while pointing to my brace and explained I was having some difficulty with it she might understand.

Nope.  The next sneer from her down turned sunken mouth was "we all don't wear our scars outside!"  We then proceeded forward to board.  The attendant checking my boarding pass  had no problem allowing me on in the sequence BEFORE this brittle dried up woman.  As I walked slowly down the corridor I thought about how miserable her life must be (worse for her husband or whomever the male lackey was with her).

And I thought about my reasons for flying West today.  I'm on my way to see an aunt I haven't seen in over twenty years (or talked with at all during them --- I remind you the family I grew up in defines dysfunction).  I just found out (yesterday) that she is dying a terrible way with a disease resulting from her decades of drinking.  Although she also smoked (a lot) it is the alcohol that has brought her to these final days of agony.  And I do remember her drinking a lot and often and anything that was available.  She drank because she was sad and hurting and angry and rueful and all of those emotions that sap time, strength and joy from a life.  And now there are only four people left who are alive and willing to say good bye to her of which I am one.

It gives me no solace to realize I almost predicted this years ago.  Actually it's pretty easy to foretell the preceding generations' unhappy endings in my family.  What did surprise me though was my own immediate and visceral reaction to hearing the news.  I can't stop crying.  I can't stop thinking of the sadness of her life.  And what compounds this is that it is so clear to me now that she was never malicious or vindictive or poisoned with envy as most of my family was.  That is not to say I would have spent any more time with her as an adult.  I never snubbed her but I carefully discouraged an ongoing relationship with her years back.  Spending any time with her was awful.... She would drink through predictable stages of self pity, anger, and hostility until she passed out -- literally and without fail.  And all conversations with her were dominated with the regrets of her life and the wounds inflicted upon her.

Now I just want to see her and somehow love her (I know it's there inside of me somewhere) and say good bye.  I want to tell her how sorry I am (not for anything I've done but just for the all she has endured in her life (whether real, imagined or self inflicted).  I want to say goodbye to her and I want to say good bye to that long lineage of relatives who made life intolerable (their own and those closest to them).

These realizations help remind me how I was successful in choosing a different path.  I really did make a conscious decision twenty odd years back that I didn't want to grow old being bitter or sad or angry like ALL in my family have or the few that are left will. That different path was not easy to stay on in the beginning but I made it.  And in making it it means that that gene of dark destiny in my family ends with my generation!  My daughter and her cousin (my deceased brother's son) don't carry it and it will never go on.  If I were a religious person this would be the appropriate time to sing hallelujah!

Which brings me back to the woman who's day I have obviously affected so negatively....  Really?  Now really!  I say to her (in my mind only):  "Why are you wasting such energy?  Get a life!  I pity you poor empty woman..."

Better is that I won't say it, don't need to, have no care to and less reason to because I love my life, who's in it, where I've been and where I'm going with it !


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