What a fucked up Christmas Eve.

One of my nephews, the son of my deceased brother, stopped by briefly to pick up his brother (now living in my mom’s garage apartment, along with the son of my alcoholic brother) on the way to their mother’s house for Christmas Eve dinner. My living/alcoholic brother’s son stopped in when he got home from dinner with my niece at their mother’s house. He stopped in on his way upstairs to the garage apartment. And that’s it. For the whole night. Not one other member of my family spent time with my mother on Christmas Eve. Not my alcoholic brother (no surprise there), not my sister, not my nieces, not a single friend or neighbor.

My father has been dead two months. What the fuck is wrong with people? Are they afraid we’ll steal their joy? Are they too lazy to deal with it? My parents usually had a house full of people and grandchildren coming and going on Christmas Eve. Tonight, not one person stopped by specifically to spend time with my mother.

“Ella is with her,” I’m sure they rationalized.*

So tomorrow I will go to my bitch sister’s house and have dinner, because apparently that’s how things are going to be, now. I don’t like it. And I don’t like her. I am only going because my mother is going. For my mother.

If my sister had her way, she’d have my mother in assisted living already, not giving her time to grieve and sort out whether she wants to stay in the house she’s lived in for 35 years with my father. She’s already suggested it several times. My sister doesn’t want my mother to need her. She’s afraid she’ll be inconvienced. She’s afraid she’ll miss a weekend away at her beach house. The bitch planned my father’s funeral and ash scattering around her social plans.

And no one showed up tonight to spend time with my mother.

The worst thing about my family members dying, other than the dying itself, is spending time and energy on my horribly dysfunctional selfish family. If my mother was gone, I’d leave my alcoholic brother to kill himself. The same way my other alcoholic brother did. And the rest of my family can fuck the hell off.

*I’ve taken a nom de plume. I feel silly when people refer to me as Bachelorette.