Word prompt: Family

I blogged once about family as I was wondering about what happens when today's untraditional families split and come together.  I was wondering about the ones that get added and subtracted in the process.  If you want more feel free to pop over to that post and read all about it.  Today I am going to rant about other meanings of family.

 

My thoughts on family have changed a lot over the years, when I was real young we were close to our family (well my Dad's family mostly) we bopped between my Grandmother's house and my Aunt's house, always living close by.  But when I was nine years old we left Ontario and moved to Alberta.  We did have a couple of Aunts there but nothing like we had left behind.  Basically all we had for family was ourselves.  We weren't what most people would call a close family, there were a lot of issues from my father's alcoholism to my brother's brushes with the law that made our home a very tense situation, but the bottom line was we knew that if someone was needed they would be there for you.  

 

When I was 19 I left Alberta and moved to Nova Scotia.  (For those of you that don't know the geography of Canada, Ontario is basically the center of the country and Alberta is over towards the west coast, Nova Scotia is the east coast...moving to Nova Scotia couldn't have gotten me farther from my family and stayed in Canada).  I was in Nova Scotia for 7 years and I saw my family twice in that whole time.  I learnt a lesson about what family really meant at that time.  Living all the way across the country from your family you learnt to depend more on yourself and those people who are in your life that aren't technically family.  I met a woman while in Nova Scotia (18 years ago) that is still my best friend even though I haven't seen her since 1996.  I had to find a new family and this woman became a sister to me.  I don't actually have a sister just two little brothers, but I knew I could count on her to be there for me as quickly as my brothers if not faster, she knows more about me and my life than anyone in my family would ever know.  

 

I moved back ‘home’ in 1996 and that brought me closer to my family in proximity but not necessarily closer to them.   After living 7 years on my own I felt smothered by them constantly trying to help me.  My parents moved a few hours away a couple of years later and this was perfect for me.  With my parents a few hours away I was close enough to be with them if something happened but not close enough to be involved in every minute of their lives, and them in mine.  Now I live six hours from my family and I couldn’t be happier.  I am not sure if it was the death of my father or the fact that we are all older now and have issues of our own families but my family is farther from close now than they were when we were younger.    I am not sure how three children can grow up in the same house and look at things completely different but that seems to be the situation with me and my brothers.  My mother was there for me a lot less than she was for my brothers but now when my mother needs someone my brothers are not there for her.  I used to know that if I needed someone my family would be there for me, but lately it has been shown to me that the only way they would be there is if my need was great, like death or something similar, anything wasn’t great enough for them to take time out of their more important lives.

 

I have a hard time now with children of my own wanting to teach them the importance of family but it is difficult to show them when the only family you have isn’t there for you.  My children see that the only person they can be certain will be there for them is themselves, and in some ways that is a good thing but in another it is something I hoped they wouldn’t learn.  I hope that no matter what happens to me in my life I never feel that my life is more important than others and that I will always be willing to do whatever I have to help someone who may need me.  I hope that I never think that the time I spend with my family is a waste of time and that there are more important things I would like to do than be with them…some days I wonder if it is worth all the effort I put out to be with my family but I would never cut them out of my life.  Six and a half years ago I learnt a very hard lesson that I wasn’t ready to learn…I had a bad relationship with my father and said for many years that I hated him and that my world would not be effect if I were to lose him.  My father died and I was devastated.  He died in a car accident and it was sudden, I never got to say goodbye, I never got to tell him that although I thought he was an a@@ I did love him, I never got to tell him anything and this has eaten at me ever since.  I have tried to tell my children that the relationships they have with their family are the only ones they have, they will never have another mother or father and the brothers and sisters they have are the only ones.  I want them to know that the way you treat people while they are here is something that could haunt you for many years to come.  I have tried to remember this in dealing with everyone in my life and I had hoped that my family had learnt the same lesson but they haven’t.

 

Enough rambling I guess the bottom line is that you only have one family and no matter what the relationship with them, they are the only family you have and one day you may miss them.  I have many issues with my family and some times I really wish I could have another family but I know I would miss them if they were gone and would probably regret not saying that they did matter to me, just like my father.