My Story, TOO.2: Is There a Creative Power in Disintegration?

Crazy²

Part IV of my story begins after Grandfather Frank's Weber Exit (Wexit) from the pack or family alliance. It more than ruffles family feathers. Like turning on a fan in a room with neatly stacked piles of papers. It stirs everybody and everything up, and makes the family vulnerable. With a disintegrating family pecking order and years-down-the-road sad consequences.

Like Great-Grandfather Frederick's five or more babies that were lost to childhood illnesses, spring-forward a couple of decades to Son Frank's grown Generations 3 and 4 children. During the years 1966 to 1974, they end up mimicking or modifying Frank's exit or fugue pattern. Specifically, Grandfather Frank personally experiences tragedies with his two grown sons, who feel distraught in various ways.

Five family tragedies occur that are disturbing and sudden premature deaths. To protect the sensitive and impressionable, the specifics are omitted.

The Generation 4s - @ 1963 with our "Blamed-Grandmother"

Grandfather Frank's death in early 1974 allows him to miss the grief of three of the five family tragedies. But the remaining family members, head-on, feel the grief. Grief that is like repeating car wrecks, leaving unseen internal wounds and injuries. And, naturally, police and medics must figuratively attend to patients who have visible or gaping wounds. But the wounded ones who show no outward signs receive little attention and no internal closure.

Septic shock takes hold within some of the less-attended victims and deceptively within Frank's ancestry. Pre-mature deaths create trust-intersection breakdowns. Second-guessing "what-ifs" and fault-finding run rampant, for years, and for various and flaring reasons. With misdirected and skewed finger-pointing blame, upon blame, upon blame. Causing relational disintegration. Some of that blame misfired to my Grandmother Hazel. (The same grandmother whose heritage passed elusive B-12 deficiency into our Generations 3 & 4 genetics.)

The "Now" in an Historical Context

The next few paragraphs that I share are personal. With a spring-forward, to early 2000's, to yours truly. A middle-class, boomer-aged educator's wife, with two young-adult children who are, at the time, recent college-graduates. Frank's Generation 4 granddaughter's family.

For perspective, both my Dad and my Father-in-law saw their career bubbles burst, for various reasons. I saw the disappointment in their eyes as they walked through those trying years. A brief journal entry or two was written about them many years ago. I also wrote in my journal about the hopes I had for my husband's career aspirations. I prayed that he would have a steady follow-through into his 60s and beyond, to end his career on a positive note.

Then in 2005 began what I call our on-and-on-a-thon decade of chaos, with our healthy daughter's frightening emergency overseas appendectomy and lengthy overseas recovery. In ways, the experience felt like low blows in a grueling heavyweight boxing match. And the match intensified with this health-conscious writer's fastest-growing grade 3 of 3 breast cancer, surgery, sickening chemo, and 2-year season of depression with mild paranoia; and more below-the-belt boxing punches occurred. We had on-and-on crazy-cray accidents (5 random car wrecks in 18 months); mystery health issues arose because of various toxins (multiple deer tick issues multiple times, negative reactions to medications, and Generation 6 food sensitivities); rare nature wallops occurred (mile-radius localized, century flooding with roof-replacing hail and deer infestations); vocation blindsides with salary decrease after decrease; and then more madness. We experienced One.Crazy.Decade.

At decade's end, we felt dizzied, punched, and jerked-around in almost every way. Enough so that others, including the insurance company, noticed the crazy². Our heads were spinning. So when the last straw, my greatest fear, career disintegration, occurred, it felt like a living nightmare that wouldn't end. My husband was given what was labeled a lateral move at work. But we knew better. He was demoted. We hit rock bottom emotionally. We felt like scolded and confused puppies with our tails between the legs, and I wanted to respond dramatically. If our financial investments were equal to Grandfather Frank's, we would have moved immediately. Hoping for career and ego boosts.

For some reason, particularly for us, running from or avoiding our troubles would have been a cop-out, like taking the AWOL escape route. We were guilty of nothing except for hard work, and we were left clueless. No job offers were coming our way, so hanging on and pressing through was our only option. To put one foot in front of the other. We prayerfully walked through a career blindside, paranoia, and confusion. Like Gone With the Wind's mantra, breathlessly stated by a tearful and despondent Scarlet O'Hara: "Tomorrow is another day"... we embraced that mantra, too.

And I continued to write and blog. It was and is my cathartic thoughts-outlet. My husband and I were metaphorically on the deserted, biblical "Isle of Patmos." Three compelling experiences drove me to isolated writings: One internal, strong impression in my young 30s, one prophecy in church in my mid-40s, and one age 59-2/3 insightful and timely word picture or metaphor that was spoken to me by a friend.

Writing, in my mind, was a given. The idea was invariably "written on the wind." The actual seed for blogging came after viewing the August 2009 movie Julie & Julia. Portraying real-life, struggling Julie Powell who blogged every day for a year, writing about each recipe she prepared every day, from Julia Child's classic cookbook. Julie vicariously survived through baking, blogging, and an inspiring book.

My daughter's urging in 2012, early into my sabbatical, finally kicked me in the rear, to initiate DeoVolente. But what would I write about? Our decade's personal struggles hadn't yet actualized to crazy. But I did want to work through my childhood home's mega-dysfunction. So I did that, through writing. And somehow those cathartic writings turned into 4 years of random blogs, concluding with "My Story" in 7 parts.

Dad's. Supreme. Court-case

I identify with adopted children who unknowingly lack crucial family blood-line data. Until now, I never fully grasped that my great-Grandfather was a doctor/author, and I knew only minuscule information about goings-on in Generations 1 and 2. Four generations in my heritage experienced piercing and intense situations, which I know made a huge impact on my parent's marriage relationship and their parenting. And the details were kept quiet for decades, until after both of my parents had died. I experienced... One.Confusing.Childhood.... in need of closure. And, too, I am learning that history sometimes has an uncanny way of repeating itself. 

When the present becomes jumbled and disturbing, a moment of crisis, like it did immediately following my husband's career set-back, to be able to build a sequenced past provides a helpful reference point. I needed direction to gain exclusive admittance, or a backstage-pass perspective. To help see the unique, kindred quirks and the similarities that relatives provide. To glean from their positive strengths and choices and even from their weaknesses and slip-ups. After our career aspirations randomly disintegrated, I desperately grasped. Like searching Julie Powell grasped for a cookbook... Particularly during the holidays 2015, I desperately needed firm heritage identity, direction, and The Book.

My amateur writing venues have all attempted to face reality. Unfortunately, I have never been one of the docile "sheeple" (one who is easily led). In ways, I admit to qualities that are nope, noper, and neurotic. Breaking social norms, I have been compelled to post my transparent writings. I am not the most positive person on the planet nor the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree. But in some situations, intuition and insight can trump bright. A more accurate adjective for me might be quirky... passionately quirky. My son-in-law says that I married the only man on the planet who could put up with my intensity, and right he is. Miss Faithful married Mr. Faithful, and I married up-up-up.

A segued purpose for My Story is to present Dad's. Supreme. Court-case. Shedding eye-opening light into early-1900's family history. To glean from early Act I of my play. Adding to the heritage cocktail mix a heavier shot of maternal great-grandparent and grandparent influences; to be an advocate for my engaging, intelligent, and book-smart father. Who greeted his young children after a long day's work with gifts of candy, and he playfully swung us by our hands and feet, like circling airplanes. Dad had a sense of humor. He accepted me even though my scholastic scores were average and at times low, and even when I dissed him during normal teenage breaking-away years; he somehow trusted me to work in his law office during high school years; he loved my husband; and, he fished with my son, took him to a White Sox game or two, and enjoyed sandbox fireworks with his grandchildren.

Admittedly, Dad was not always steady on his feet, but I always sensed his steady faithfulness and Unconditional.Love. Yet, I blamed Dad unnecessarily, for many things.