How Does That Work?

Last July I had the unfortunate occurrence of having two people I knew die. I posted stories of both and received a bit more attention for one over the other because most of the readers of the blog knew one of the folks that passed. To remind those that don’t remember, Ronnie was a guy that lived next door to me in Trenton until they moved to a neighboring city. I still saw him and his brother Buzzie (Brian) on a regular basis because they’re Grandmother lived next door to us.

Buzzie had major issues with alcohol throughout his adult life and disappeared from his family’s lives for the past 10 to 15 years. When I say disappeared I mean it in the most literal way imaginable. He just went away and never came back. The family thought they would spot him once in a while around town and once Ron even spoke to him and was told to go away and leave him alone. Well, Buzz’s mother got a call last month that Brian, his real name, had been admitted to a local hospital and his organs were shutting down. Marge, his mother, was able to get to the hospital in time to be by her son’s side as he died. This woman lost two sons in less than eight months. Imagine that.

I bring this up because something about it just amazes me. How and why would someone decide to literally eliminate their family from their lives? In this case I guess alcohol can be blamed but how could it have lasted so long? I can understand being upset with someone and not speaking to them but it’s your family. These are the people you’ve known longer than anyone in your life and I just don’t see how they could have been so terrible.

I understand there are instances where something terrible happens and people go nuts and things like that, but in general, how do you decide that this person you have grown up with is no longer worth having in your life? I was chatting online with someone I knew as a kid and asked about his family. He told me he really didn’t know about his brother because he had not spoken to him in over 10 years. I wanted to ask him about it but it really isn’t any of my business, seeing that I haven’t spoken to the guy in over 30 years, but how does that happen?

I was out with some friends last night down in Detroit and mentioned that I had been thinking about this subject. One of the guys stated that he could understand it if, for instance, someone in his family had been convicted of a felony. I found that kind of startling too. I mean, it seems to me that, even if you don’t understand what caused the problem, he or she is still your family and to show some kind of support would be the least you could do. You don’t have to agree with whatever they had done but jeez, I don’t know, maybe I’m just way off on this.

There has been numerous times in my life that I’ve wanted to just hide myself away and not talk to anyone. I can’t imagine it lasting for so long that I would lose complete contact with everyone, especially my family. I don’t know, I just don’t get it. I’d love to get some feedback on this whether you agree or not. It’s really been on my mind a lot lately.