Thy Brother's Blood Cries To Me From The Ground

I know I rag on the whole “blood is thicker than water” line, and it’s not so much because I have anything against Family, it’s just that it’s an insult to the love I have for my friends. So if I have given the impression that family isn’t important to me, then allow me to recant that insinuation by instituting my own personal Diet of Worms, myself doubling as Emperor Charles V and Martin Luther.

Nothing in this post will make sense until this first is understood: I love my family more than anything. I love them because they are psychotic, imperfect, needy, spontaneous, and dysfunctional. I love them because we’ve taken road trips to hell and back, and we’ve all survived. I love them because they are living proof that “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” is totally false. They are actually the poster children for “What doesn’t kill you will eventually kill you, and in the meantime, we will utilize these misfortunes as excuses to participate in the craziest most outlandish forms of debauchery.” I love them because in spite of all this, they are the most innocent people I know. And I have the utmost respect for them.

My family is 1,500 miles away from me and every day it hurts more and more. And after five years, the pain sears harsher than I thought possible. Some things they have experienced are truly things that no human being should ever have to endure; my grandmother being the first, as she’s experienced the untimely and ghastly deaths of two children (four if you’re counting the miscarriage of twins due to doctor malpractice), one whole side of her family being wiped out by a house fire, and many, many more deaths. She even experienced her own death while giving birth to my mom, and she can give you an eye witness account of the entryway to hell. But she survived, and fifty-four years later, she is a born-again Christian who has led thousands to Christ, but still gets chills at the thought of her soul whisking briefly through a Christless eternity.

I have cousins who lost their father in a random shooting and their mother in a heartless murder. My father was drafted to Vietnam when he was 18, leaving behind a pregnant wife. I’ve had close family members disappear for years at a time; ones I thought were dead and suddenly they reappear and I find myself considering the “Brothers are friends from God” plaque as a Christmas gift hours after I thought I no longer had brothers.

Haha, yes. Dysfunction: never was a more difficult question asked me than the simplistic, “So do you have any brothers or sisters?” The answer varies, depending on the year. Sometimes I do; sometimes I don’t, and the numbers vary. By sister, do you mean biological, or my dad’s ex-wife’s daughter, who is half sisters with my half sister and half brother, who would come to our house on my dad‘s allotted custody weekends and would call my parents mom and dad? By brother, does this include a statute of limitations? If I say yes, are you going to ask me questions to which I have no answers, like ‘how is he?’ or ‘does he like grapes?’”

The atoms that are my family are complex; each having their own stories of horror and then our collective stories of horror. But a love so thick runs through each of us and melts us together so that no matter what happens or where hell-on-earth takes us, we are bound by this heavy substance, this matter I can only describe as blood.