A Losing Battle

Cat, 2.  Duct-tape, 0. 

My grandfather passed away on Monday night.  He was 88.  I never knew him.  Rest in peace.

It's a strange, ambivalent, disturbing time.  My birthmother would very much like me to trek across the snowy Midwest for his funeral.  I am mourning Lucille Clifton, whom I know only through her words, with more real grief. 

This is the man who features on page 1 of The Truth Book as the reason my birthmother left her home state to conceal her pregnancy and give birth across the country. 

This is the man who, when I met him in my late twenties, was no longer brutal, no longer scary.  Yet, while civil enough, he was nonetheless incurious about me, uninterested in forming a connection.  We've exchanged perhaps thirty words, total, at gatherings in the years since then.  He was very nearly a stranger.

And yet.

Adoption does weird things to the psyche.  When I heard the news of his death, I immediately got shaky, sad, sick--despite the fact that I know my grocer better.  When I learned that he died peacefully at home, propped up so he could see the farm he loved, I felt grateful.  Some impulses are powerful.  Ancestors.  Familia.

Yet, although I know it would please his daughters, my birthmother and aunts, whom I care about, I will not be driving cross-country for his funeral service. 

Adoption faces one with odd dilemmas.  I try not, as a rule, to be unkind.  Moreover, I know there's a chance that my absence will be remarked, that I will be the missing cousin, that this failure of loyalty will be remembered and may harm relationships I have no wish to harm. 

I don't have a good reason for staying home.  Not one that I can articulate yet, anyway.  Just a mute, stubborn refusal. 

I'm trying to work through this.