Since January? I didn't know until now?
May. 10th, 2021 10:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
maeve66I am so sad. I was working on annoying bullshit work stuff (new super clunky "Learning Management System" designed for universities, forced on us in my district for high school, middle school (me) and ELEMENTARY SCHOOL...) and I had to go get a Zoom link from my work email so I could figure out some stuff with a teacher friend. In my inbox was an email I was not expecting, having nothing to do with work.
There was an email from my half-sister's sister, who was also adopted. I haven't met her. I've talked to her on the phone at least once. Beth talked about her a fair amount -- Beth, my older adopted half-sister. I know I've told that insane story about how she came into our lives, the night before my sister's wedding in 1997. The email asked me to call her, Laurie.
I loved Beth so much. Even before I met her, before it even seemed likely I WOULD meet her, after my mom told me about this baby she'd had to give up for adoption in 1961, five years before my birth... I fantasized about her. I imagined that wherever she was, she was growing up, somehow, as a socialist.
I mean, that's some ridiculous wish fulfillment there. An older mentor teenage sibling socialist. But the moment I met her I enjoyed her and was happy to have her -- and my mother was overjoyed to finally be in contact with her; she'd put herself on every list, but never heard anything... and now. Ah, god DAMN it. Fuck my family's genes, just fuck them. And fuck them in combination with alcoholism. Last week I was on FB and I looked at my chat logs, trying to see when I had last talked with Beth. On the phone (texting) it was December 3rd. On FB, in Chat, it was January 26th. We chatted for a long time, frequently. I don't do short writing, in any form, not even texts.
Beth killed herself on January 31st. She was a few months from 60. The police haven't found her phone, so her sister Laurie didn't have contact info for me (or for any of Beth's long time friends, since Laurie is not on Facebook.) Laurie finally searched for me online and found my school email address. She just asked me to call her because she had "news of our sister, Beth." Well, that didn't sound good. Because otherwise Beth would tell me her own god damned news. I think I have probably been more closely in touch with her for the past several years than almost any of her other friends or family. Not more than her friend M.
It sucks so bad. She was brilliant and funny and wry and an excellent writer. She had a low, husky voice that was really nice to listen to. The worst thing I could ever say about her was that she refused to be divorced from the Democratic Party and we argued about Bernie, who she thought was angry and offensively loud. I was like, "Jewish grandfather! Cuddly though cantankerous!" But she couldn't see it.
I hate thinking our conversations are done. I ache thinking how lonely and unhappy and hopeless she felt. I was hoping she'd accept a plane ticket and come out here this summer, as she did a few years ago when she came to Lake Geneva to visit her mom (my mom), my dad and my stepmother (survivors of the Best Divorce in the World). I wanted Ruby and Rosie to meet her, so much. They know of her, but I couldn't babble as much about her as I would about literally any other friend because Beth was something... someone impossible for my sister to accept. I know that's not RQ's fault; I know you can't force emotions; I know I need to not resent RQ's rejection of Beth. But it hurt. It hurts even more, now. RQ's reaction today was: well, thank god our mom isn't alive to have to face this. Which is true. I don't know how many suicides you can take in. Take on. Bear the burden of.
I was telling M. that one of the things about getting to know Beth back in 1997 when she first came up to Chicago from Orlando, on a business trip (it was a funny job; she was working for some company, Lucent, training their call center and customer relations people on how to interact better with real humans... by making them act in skits with her)... anyway, it was the discovery that this older half sister had, like, all of the skills and talents and interests that my sister and I did, COMBINED. She loved writing and drawing like me, and had worked as an editor at Harcourt-Brace Jovanovich, which field (textbook writing and editing) I'd definitely coveted. And she loved acting, deeply, like RQ. She had her SAG card. She was Harper in an Orlando production of Angels in America. She did voiceovers for advertisements on Orlando public transit -- just as my mother had done voice overs for Wisconsin Public Radio for the Madison Public Library, which glory my mom relived forever, even more than her 1970 run for US Senator on the Socialist Workers Party ticket. There was so much synchronicity, with Beth. There was more overlap, too, also genetically linked... which was a built-in predilection to alcohol addiction.
I think Beth had mentioned suicide once, I didn't think seriously, though I knew she was deeply unhappy and had been for years. But in my head, in denial about what she'd actually said in terms of her emotions, the image I kept seeing was this inexorable hourglass with money slipping down instead of sand. She'd been unemployed for five or more years. Her unemployment was long gone and she wouldn't try to get disability ... and I don't know whether you can, for alcoholism. She had lived first on what her mother had left her, and then on what my mom left her... and neither of those amounts were enormous. I kept worrying about what she was going to do. I don't know if her decision was partly about not having any more money or not.
When I got old enough to think about my uncle Peter's suicide (he killed himself in grad school, when I was only two... my father, his best friend, found him, and got him to the hospital, and had to be the one to make the decision to pull the plug because my grandmother couldn't do it)... I was angry at him. I was angry because I never got a chance to know him and I think I would have liked him so much. I'm not angry at Beth. I'm so sad for her. And I'm sorry for myself. And I miss her.
There was an email from my half-sister's sister, who was also adopted. I haven't met her. I've talked to her on the phone at least once. Beth talked about her a fair amount -- Beth, my older adopted half-sister. I know I've told that insane story about how she came into our lives, the night before my sister's wedding in 1997. The email asked me to call her, Laurie.
I loved Beth so much. Even before I met her, before it even seemed likely I WOULD meet her, after my mom told me about this baby she'd had to give up for adoption in 1961, five years before my birth... I fantasized about her. I imagined that wherever she was, she was growing up, somehow, as a socialist.
I mean, that's some ridiculous wish fulfillment there. An older mentor teenage sibling socialist. But the moment I met her I enjoyed her and was happy to have her -- and my mother was overjoyed to finally be in contact with her; she'd put herself on every list, but never heard anything... and now. Ah, god DAMN it. Fuck my family's genes, just fuck them. And fuck them in combination with alcoholism. Last week I was on FB and I looked at my chat logs, trying to see when I had last talked with Beth. On the phone (texting) it was December 3rd. On FB, in Chat, it was January 26th. We chatted for a long time, frequently. I don't do short writing, in any form, not even texts.
Beth killed herself on January 31st. She was a few months from 60. The police haven't found her phone, so her sister Laurie didn't have contact info for me (or for any of Beth's long time friends, since Laurie is not on Facebook.) Laurie finally searched for me online and found my school email address. She just asked me to call her because she had "news of our sister, Beth." Well, that didn't sound good. Because otherwise Beth would tell me her own god damned news. I think I have probably been more closely in touch with her for the past several years than almost any of her other friends or family. Not more than her friend M.
It sucks so bad. She was brilliant and funny and wry and an excellent writer. She had a low, husky voice that was really nice to listen to. The worst thing I could ever say about her was that she refused to be divorced from the Democratic Party and we argued about Bernie, who she thought was angry and offensively loud. I was like, "Jewish grandfather! Cuddly though cantankerous!" But she couldn't see it.
I hate thinking our conversations are done. I ache thinking how lonely and unhappy and hopeless she felt. I was hoping she'd accept a plane ticket and come out here this summer, as she did a few years ago when she came to Lake Geneva to visit her mom (my mom), my dad and my stepmother (survivors of the Best Divorce in the World). I wanted Ruby and Rosie to meet her, so much. They know of her, but I couldn't babble as much about her as I would about literally any other friend because Beth was something... someone impossible for my sister to accept. I know that's not RQ's fault; I know you can't force emotions; I know I need to not resent RQ's rejection of Beth. But it hurt. It hurts even more, now. RQ's reaction today was: well, thank god our mom isn't alive to have to face this. Which is true. I don't know how many suicides you can take in. Take on. Bear the burden of.
I was telling M. that one of the things about getting to know Beth back in 1997 when she first came up to Chicago from Orlando, on a business trip (it was a funny job; she was working for some company, Lucent, training their call center and customer relations people on how to interact better with real humans... by making them act in skits with her)... anyway, it was the discovery that this older half sister had, like, all of the skills and talents and interests that my sister and I did, COMBINED. She loved writing and drawing like me, and had worked as an editor at Harcourt-Brace Jovanovich, which field (textbook writing and editing) I'd definitely coveted. And she loved acting, deeply, like RQ. She had her SAG card. She was Harper in an Orlando production of Angels in America. She did voiceovers for advertisements on Orlando public transit -- just as my mother had done voice overs for Wisconsin Public Radio for the Madison Public Library, which glory my mom relived forever, even more than her 1970 run for US Senator on the Socialist Workers Party ticket. There was so much synchronicity, with Beth. There was more overlap, too, also genetically linked... which was a built-in predilection to alcohol addiction.
I think Beth had mentioned suicide once, I didn't think seriously, though I knew she was deeply unhappy and had been for years. But in my head, in denial about what she'd actually said in terms of her emotions, the image I kept seeing was this inexorable hourglass with money slipping down instead of sand. She'd been unemployed for five or more years. Her unemployment was long gone and she wouldn't try to get disability ... and I don't know whether you can, for alcoholism. She had lived first on what her mother had left her, and then on what my mom left her... and neither of those amounts were enormous. I kept worrying about what she was going to do. I don't know if her decision was partly about not having any more money or not.
When I got old enough to think about my uncle Peter's suicide (he killed himself in grad school, when I was only two... my father, his best friend, found him, and got him to the hospital, and had to be the one to make the decision to pull the plug because my grandmother couldn't do it)... I was angry at him. I was angry because I never got a chance to know him and I think I would have liked him so much. I'm not angry at Beth. I'm so sad for her. And I'm sorry for myself. And I miss her.
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Date: 2021-05-11 11:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-05-13 04:35 am (UTC)