Date: 03-01-2016
I recall a short but telling dream I had last night. My brother and I were celebrating New Year’s Eve at our parents’ house. I was standing alone on the little square in front of their garage. But I had my own place now since a little while and I suddenly realised in the dream: “Why aren’t we celebrating this over at my place, without the restricting rules and disapproving oversight of our parents?” I wanted to suggest this to my brother, who was inside the house. I walked around the house to the front door. As I stood before it, the door opened, and out walked my sister, her husband, my brother, and his girlfriend. My sister was crying, her husband visibly sad, my brother looked like he had been crying, but his girlfriend seemed mostly fine. She was calm and comforted him. I hadn’t seen my parents. In the dream it was a given they were inside the house. They remained inside the house throughout this short dream. The door closed and the five of us stood outside on the driveway. After my brother and sister, and their spouses had exited the house all its windows turned dark black, like the shaded glass of a limousine. I could no longer see what happened inside. I asked: “What happened?” My sister answered: “We have confronted mom and dad with the past. This had to stop. Things could no longer continue as they did. All three their children were damaged by all the things they had swept under the carpet, and what little we had uncovered they were trying with great effort to bury again.” My brother confirmed it: “Things were getting out of hand. Something had to be done. This needed to be said.” None of them felt like celebrating New Year with me now, though. They all wanted to processes what had happened. I was glad they had not involved me into this.
Analysis 17-02-2024:
I write this analysis in the far future. In the rear view mirror things can become so much more clear. You should know that the Christmas that preceded this New Year’s Eve was the one where I received a Christmas card from my parents, which on opening the envelope turned out to have come with an appendix. As I took the card out of the envelope, this appendix fell to the ground out between the card. This appendix was the catalyst for a lot of conversations about the past between me and my siblings.
The Christmas card was generic, though my mother had misspelled my name again, as she also did on the envelope. She insists that the spelling of my name is the way she spells it, with two capital letters in one word, even though official government documents do not spell my name like that. But apart from the card there was this appendix, which I picked up from the floor and folded open. It was a letter that opened with the line: “To all our children.” Intuitively I folded up the letter again, and put it in a drawer.
It was apparently a letter they wrote to all of us. Any Christmas card that comes with an appendix containing what I predicted this appendix would contain is a Christmas card that illustrates a complete and utter disregard by its sender of what Christmas is supposed to stand for. I was going to read it some time later when I felt like it. I didn’t feel like consenting to their influence over my life at this moment. Later through my sister and brother I found out that I was spot on about what I predicted was the content of the letter, as they had received an identical version themselves through similar means.
But I never quite thoroughly inquired about it. To explain how I approached this I need to give you a little backstory. Many years ago, my own mother had tried to part with her own family for what I think amounts to months, or perhaps even up to two years. During that time period, her oldest sister had sent her a letter, with the approval of her other family members. In that letter they excused all their shitty behaviour of them to her, and that letter concluded with the statement that the things they couldn’t excuse away in any specific way were just “inherent to life”.
I remember vividly how insulted and deeply hurt my mother was by that specific last statement in the letter. Things just happened? It added insult to injury of what had already transpired between them and her so far, and that is a long story going back decades into her past. She would bring this subject up time and again during tea and dinner, and would always touch upon that statement. “It’s just inherent to life.” As her pain subsided over time we would still joke about this sometimes, amongst ourselves, like when someone accidentally dropped a spoon on her toes, we’d say: “Oh, it’s inherent to life.” Mocking the statement, which was clearly just her family’s way of stating they weren’t going to take any responsibility for their behaviour, and trying to package that in a thoughtful sounding way. But now back to the letter me and my siblings received.
I inquired to my brother about the letter, asking if he had received it, and if so whether he had read it. He had. The letter had been sitting on his desk in their house when he came home from work one day. I told him I hadn’t read it. He asked if I was going to. At the time, I wasn’t sure so I said I didn’t know. He said if I wouldn’t read it I wouldn’t miss out on anything I didn’t already knew. I asked him this witty question: “Let me guess. It explains their shitty behaviour, and the rest is just “inherent to life“?” making air quotes with my fingers as I said that last part. My brother’s facial expression changed, and he laughed. Yup. That was it.
Many years later the subject came up between me and my sister. Hers was handed to her by our mom, together with a Christmas card. She too confirmed that my similarities with the letter our mom received from her family were there and that this was indeed the purport of their letter. The letter illustrated just how utterly blind for their own conduct our parents were, specifically our mother in this case. If I ever wanted to make a case for how she is to me what her family is to her, this letter would be exhibit number one.
Though I intended to read their letter at some point, I never did. For months I would sometimes come across it again, opening the drawer, reminding me of its existence. One time the letter had fallen out of the back end of the drawer and I found it laying on the ground below the cabin. Every time I saw it again I contemplated whether I was going to read it, or postpone again. I chose to postpone every time.
Then, after a few years I would move out of the student dorm, and into a house with my wife. When I moved my stuff, I could somehow no longer find the letter. I have no idea what happened to it. When moving, I had looked for it to no avail. It was gone.
Maybe it did move and is somewhere with the stuff I have in the attic, still boxed up, but I still haven’t found it. Maybe it is for the best that I never read it. All it could do now is make me angry. Maybe I will find it again when it no longer has this power over me, and I can finally laugh at it. In a way, this letter can perhaps be seen as something hilarious.
