The Days of Anger

I think I'll do a post a day about something I'm angry at.

Just for a while...

If you're uninterested just click away. I won't be angry at you.

I'm angry at people who lie.

Steven's Sisters cried and screamed over his dead body for three hours.

The stood over a contorted yellow and bloating corpse to flog themselves yelling at the heavens, "We should have come and visited when he was alive." And other things but basically a self-flagellating yell that echoed through the halls of our fair hospital.

These were appropriate sentiments.

I believe Southern Baptists declare their sins aloud in Church and somehow are absolved of them? I'm unsure.

What infuriated me even more though was the, "honey, you did the best you could" and "he knew you loved him" that reverberated through the tiny room.

Bullshit.

They didn't do their best and he felt totally unloved and alone. Their best was jumping on a plane and coming to visit and they didn't do their best until he was long gone.

And you know what else? They didn't do their best until someone else footed the bill.

Greed is bad.

Catering to your basest fear is bad.

But consoling someone and telling them their behavior was acceptable when it was not. I'm still deciding who is the bigger asshole.

I detest false praise for children as much as false absolution for adults.

It's too fucking late to be a good family.

And Steven would kill me for feeling this, much less writing it because he's kinder and more forgiving than I am.

So what angers me is telling people it's okay to be bad as long as you feel guilty after the fact.

I grew up in a very observant home. I am first generation after the Holocaust. I'm the first American on one side, perhaps that sheds a little light on my rigidity and adherence to laws of conduct. My upbringing tells me, my belief system tells me that what you feel, what you believe and what you think are of no importance when compared to how you behave.

This behavior has left me very angry.

I spend every bit of energy I have today letting Adam and Eve feel loved and letting them know that my seething rage is at AIDS and a family's failure to actively love.

I know my children are small but I don't want them afraid of death. What I want is for them to watch our family value our lives.

This is a good lesson.

My children know AIDS.