Family

All four of the times a close relative has died, including the first one when I was 11, I've chided myself for not having closer relationships with the rest of the family.

Each time, I've felt guilty for not having the kind of relationship with my relatives that leads to joyous Facebook posts of vacation pictures or drinking pictures or happy-family-on-Sunday pictures.

But I feel so very different and therefore separate from all of them.
I feel like my spiritual life has grown in vastly different directions, and has become more complex than the "old-time religion" that most of my relations seem tied to.
My politics is partially in direct opposition to many of them, and too complex for the rest.
I also feel like the majority of them have their lives more or less together and stabilized, and mine feels ever in flux (even with nearly six amazing years of marriage under my belt) and never where I want it to be.

Even my PERSONALITY feels incompatible. even as I continue to endeavor to be the life of the party.

Maybe it's mostly the cussing and social drinking, both of which were such massive taboos growing up that they weren't even spoken of?
I don't know.

I'm still putting on some degree of a mask whenever I'm around anyone I share genetics with.


Today, I lost my maternal grandfather, or as I called him, "Grosvater".
By far the grandparent I was closest to, and the last one to shuffle off this mortal coil.

He was one of the few people I consider to be a mentor.
I've had many role-models and many sources of encouragement, but very few people in my life have been both.

Grosvater was one of that exclusive, august body.
One of the few people I have endeavored to emulate, and by them have been encouraged and equipped to do so.

I share most of my physical traits with my mother's side of the family, and my resemblance to Grosvater was no exception.
Growing up as an introvert with a very dry sense of humor, I was enamored with his ability to pull jokes seemingly out of thin air, as well as his library of history books and literature.
Perhaps unconsciously, I gained an early interest in both history and literature, the latter of which became the center of my college education and now my profession.

To say nothing of trying to grow a more crowd-pleasing sense of humor.

Even though both of my parents are college-educated, I never noticed them using it in conversation the way Grosvater did with his Masters of Divinity degree.
It helped that he was a retired pastor, and had become accustomed long before my birth to deep conversations of a theological nature.

Which I, again perhaps unconsciously, pushed myself to enter.
Especially with my parents' encouragement to build a more intellectually sound theology for myself.
Thus on an increasing number of occasions as I grew older and more experienced, I played Plato to his Socrates.
Even in my own gradual outgrowing of much of the traditional church dogma, he was ever a source of affirmation and encouragement.


I say all this because I feel as if I've been building a self (my-self) my whole life, like a skyscraper from the ground up.
And while I can see where my parents made great choices in how they raised me, my relationships with them and with the rest of my family doesn't seem to be a major part of the skyscraper.
Except for Grosvater, whose presence like so many is not truly felt until it is replaced by absence.
As if a major pillar of the skyscraper suddenly collapsed.
The building will stand; it is solid enough to absorb the damage.

But, just to abandon the metaphor in a shockingly sudden fashion, it isn't until now that I realize that much of what I have spent my life working toward as a person was the example set by Grosvater.

Was he perfect?
No.
I found out the hard way (via making him a jazz CD) that he was prejudiced against black people.
Which shocked the CRAP out of me, having dated a black girl for nearly three years.

There are just so many parts of the person I've become which I chose to take on and grow and develop because he provided an example to follow.


I see my friends sharing wonderful experiences with their parents and cousins and siblings, and I'm honestly jealous because they don't seem to be such different people from those relatives.

I'm so thankful that my wife and I are so close-knit that there are no masks.
I just don't know how to take off the mask I put on when in the presence of relatives without completely alienating them.