Hamm On Wry

My sister just got married. It was a lovely wedding – the bride radiant, the groom nervous. The groom’s parents beaming. The bride’s mother cried as her daughter pledged to love, honor, and cherish ’til death do them part. A year ago, I never would have imagined how things would play out.

This has been an extraordinary year for a friend. As 2008 dawned, she was waking in the middle of an alcoholic nightmare and suffering from a huge hangover. She’s also has bipolar disorder. Her parents had loaned her a car, and when they discovered that she had been driving under the influence (again!) with three children in the vehicle, they immediately took the keys and confiscated the car.

Despite having two highly marketable degrees, she was working for less than $10/hr at a dead-end job, not really able to support herself and her daughter. The combination of debilitating diseases had wrecked havoc on her life. In a little over four years she had been fired, dismissed, or quit under duress from more than twelve jobs. She had been hospitalized three times with a blood-alcohol level of .40 or thereabouts (you read that right – about 5 times the legal limit!), her daughter had been taken into custody by a state, and she had spent a month in a treatment program. Yet she refused to take the medications and continued heavy drinking.

Well, for a while. Lately, she has been incredibly successful in turning her life around. In March, she enlisted in the Montana Army National Guard. She is in the middle of her training to become a helicopter mechanic. I am surprised that she was accepted with her medical history, but the opportunity is terrific. The Guard is paying off her student loans and she will be a full-time employee when she completes her training. She should therefore always have the medication and counseling that her mental illness and addiction require – and it seems she’s taking them. The days of dead-end jobs are behind her. Before leaving for basic training, he boyfriend asked her to marry him. She is being given another chance at a bright future for herself and her daughter.

Me & Boo

This is the story of my sister. I wasn’t at her wedding because I, like my mother, wasn’t invited. In her world, my mother is the ogre that tried to ruin her life. Her stories of her childhood now include a morass of abuse, neglect, torture and trauma – but none of it is real. She actually told me my mom is evil, and that everything in my life that’s wrong can be drawn back to mom. And it’s utter bullshit.

My sister is well loved by family, regardless of, and in fact, in spite of this horrible year. She gets into fights with my mom because she feels some odd combination of longing to be just like mom and abhorrence of that exact desire. My sister is her own worst critic, and instead of focusing her energies on making herself better, she’s just changed her reality to better reflect who she wishes she was – and it’s ironic that the one person she wants to be is the same person she has so effectively cut out of her life – our mom. When I said my mom cried the night my sister got married, I wasn’t lying. I’m pretty sure my dad cried, too. Neither of them were at the wedding, tho, as my sister has banished my mom so completely.

But it’s a new year, and I hope that she does well. I do love her, and I’m glad that she’s found love. I hope it can last the rather expansive reality check that’s headed her way, but like most love, I think it can. Her husband is a good guy, even if he can’t see the forest for the trees most days.

I life my life without regrets, always have, always will. I accept what I do for my choices, and that my life is what I have chosen it to be. My sister is forcing me to choose between her and my mom. I choose my mom, my dad, my other sister, my nephew, brother-in-law, cousins, aunts, uncles and the whole brood that expands and covers a good portion of the country. I will not let them go for the sake of pretending that what my sister has done is ok, it’s not.

I will gladly buy her all the Lincoln logs she needs to build a bridge and get over this, even if I have to take up a collection to get the necessary abundance. I want my family back, but I want it back in one piece, not divided by the imaginative machinations of a deluded little girl.

The pic below was taken with my new iPhone right after I sauntered out of the AT&T store with it. So I have a new number and I’ve let most people know via the email that I have for you. Some of those appear out of date so if you need the new digits, shoot me an email.

It’s been a stressful week. It’s the 2nd anniversary of Richard’s death, and it’s the first time that I’ve been able to spend it with Janna basically attached to her hip. During the first year of grieving she couldn’t handle being around me too much as she would attempt to convince herself it was 2005 and my being there was normal because we had lived together in 2005 while Richard was in Iraq. When he returned at the end of 2005, a new chapter of their lives started, and I helped to smooth that transition for them both since the Army hasn’t figured out how.

And then, bam! Gone.

Now, Janna, The Cheerleader, has had to deal with this loss for two years. Day in and day out she’s worked to get her life back, get her sensibilities back, and to get as well as she can. Not easy, not fast, and certainly not painless. But still, moving forward in big ways. And hanging out with her 24/7 is a lot of fun even when she’s screaming. Sometimes, because she is.

That being said, the little extra stressors in her life are not much fun. They suck. Like, transmission needs to be replaced at a cost of several grand and lots of without car time. Not making her happy.

Consider as well that the car got it’s original transmission changed at approx. 78k miles in October 2005, the second swapped out after only 25k miles and 18 months, and now the third is being swapped out for the fourth after a mere 20k miles and 12 months. Not pretty.

Worse, the car is now out of the extended warranty, so the transmission isn’t covered in any way. And as we all know, they aren’t cheap either.

But we called Honda USA and went over the events, and asked. What could hurt if we asked for help, the worst thing they could do is say no, and then we were no worse off for asking. They said they would review the case and get back to us in few days. Usually, this is corporate speak for “Let me get a social normative graph because it’s something to refer to and will take time, tricking one to think we’re making the effort, when we’re just stalling” but not this time.

After considering all that Janna has had to deal with this, it’s been sucky. Just fucking sucky. Having the car issues to deal with all throughout the Anniversary day did some good in distracting from the insanity inherent in a 32 year old widow’s life. It seemed like a good thing to me, but Janna felt that she didn’t get anything accomplished on thursday, even tho she spent the day reconnecting with various parts of her family, both the family she was born into and the family that she was married into. None of it was easy.

Honda has decided to pay all but 10% of the bill to replace the transmission. It will therefore have a 3 year/36,000 mile warranty for the transmission itself. So the little people can play their game again. And we whole-heartedly thank them.

YAY!

I’ve been offline since late last week, which was when I had a last-minute deal appear in my lap and proceed to shred my thursday and friday like a demon-possessed wood chipper. Oh so much fun.

And let’s not forget the random weather in Montana that included a blizzard that appeared at 2 am Saturday and brought along the wind from a hurricane and a couple of lightening bolts left over from last spring. It seems that the weather was being run by the same windows machine that did the fireworks for Seattle. Heavy, wet, sticky snow that was piling up sideways as I needed to depart to drive to Bozeman for a flight. Rapture.

Anyway, it ended up being a non-issue, as the new PT drives excellently (more on that lovely bit later) and the storm and I parted ways after 32 miles. I made my flight, although when I landed in Denver to switch planes, I got a voice mail from United that if I missed my flight, I could get right on the next one out of Bozeman. Nice service, really, as it had to arrive right about when I checked in, since I turned my phone off after calling home to say the snow hadn’t killed me.

Now I’m in Houston for the Second Anniversary of Hell. Mostly, it’s been pretty good. I’m not looking forward to some of the events we have to do for this, but I am glad to be here. I want to know what the word would be that means ‘an obligation that honors me to undertake, that creates happiness out of misery, and that helps all involved in different ways, but that still sucks bilgewater’. I’m sure there is a German word for it, along the lines of schadenfraude, but it’s not been made into a song yet.

Anyway, back in Houston with the Cheerleader. Back dealing with emotional wounds that blacken the sun and destroy souls, an ongoing battle that seems to finally be going our way. I wouldn’t walk away for anything, but I wish no one would ever go through this.