Live like you are dying

It is interesting how much a person changes their perceptions of people and life in general as hey grow up. When I was a kid I never had a second’s hesitation about riding my bike from one end of Yakima to the other. As an adult I look back and think that it was a miracle I was not taken by some sicko. I believed in Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, and the Tooth Fairy whole heartedly when I was younger. Now I play those roles for my children. I used to see family as a value that had more worth than gold. Now I see the hypocrisy and the barely hidden animosity that family brings.

I used to love staying with various extended family members when I was younger. I loved watching my dad’s family get together and drink themselves silly while us kids played poker for Ritz crackers and tried to steal sips of alcohol when the adults were not looking. We used to go swimming in the Willamette River (YUCK), riding on my uncle’s boat, and playing on the wave runners. I loved hanging out with my dad’s family because they were so much FUN! I still love hanging out with them I just don’t quite fit in because I cannot hold my liquor at all. That is an unforgivable sin to the Sanchez’! 

My mom’s side of the family was never the "fun" side with the exception of just one of my aunts. Whenever the rest of the family got into a room with one another they always came off as fake. No one really seemed to like each other and no one valued anyone else. I never really liked going to see my mom’s side of the family except to see my cousins and the one “fun” aunt. This aunt was always loving and generous and I enjoyed spending time with her and her kids. She had a house by a lake that was surrounded by woods which everyone knows is the greatest place ever for Washington brats like me. We kids would spend hours at the lake swimming to the dock and diving off, digging our way through the Lilly pads to go fishing, and trying to catch dragonflies. We would lose ourselves in the woods surrounding her house. We searched every bush and plant for edible items such as blackberries and huckleberries and tried not to eat too many of them so that there was enough for my Aunt to make them into a pie.  She would take us to the local rivers and show us how to look for agate stones, coprolite, and craw dads. She was the first person who tried to teach me to cook and she always listened to anything I had to say.

I remember trying to make her dinner once when I was 11 or 12. My sister Melissa, and my Aunt’s future step-daughter got the idea in our heads that we were going to cook for my aunt and her boyfriend so that they could share a romantic dinner. None of us had any idea how to cook, but I thought I could work my way through making spaghetti since I had seen my mom make it a million times. You just add tomato sauce to a pan with a packet of spaghetti seasoning and then boil noodles. How hard could it be?  I don’t know what it tasted like, but I do know that my aunt did not have the special seasoning packet that my mom had so I just opened up spices at random and threw them in with the tomato sauce. I bet it was the worst meal they had ever had, but they ate it up like it was created by a 5 star chef. That was just how my aunt was and I think it is why I was always so drawn to her.

As I got older, I learned that she was no different from the other members of my mom’s family, she was just better at hiding it from the kids. My cousin once told me that she had overheard my aunt telling my uncle that I was such a horrible child for my parents because I had a drug problem and I was an unbelievable slut. When my cousin told me this, I cried. How could she have said these things about me? I had never done drugs and I had never done anything with a boy other than kiss one. Why would she say that about me?  That conversation changed the way I viewed my aunt and it colored every single happy memory I had of her. It was like my mother had said it about me. She was the one person outside of my mom and dad whose opinion I truly valued and that was what she thought of me. So I did what I have always done when I get hurt and I put up walls and pushed her away.

I have never really spoken to my aunt in the 13 years since I was told her true opinion of me. I see her very rarely at family functions when I am forced to go by my mother and I try to pretend to be nice to her though I am sure she can see right through it. That is how our relationship is now. We are fake to one another and ask questions about the other’s life so we can put up this pretense of being civil to one another so that we can pretend that we are a loving and close family. Actually I don’t pretend for those reasons. I pretend to keep my mom happy. I could care less about her or anyone else in that family and I only put up the façade for the sake of my grandmother when she was alive. Now that she has passed I have no trouble letting them know what I truly think of them and the way they treat one another.

It wouldn’t bother me in the slightest to never see or speak to any of them again so imagine my surprise when my mom called 2 days ago to tell me that my aunt has cancer and that it is very advanced and she will be lucky to see Christmas. Initially, I tried to be supportive for my mom who’s last year has been so rough on her I am amazed she gets out of bed every day, but the longer I talked to her the more I found that I was upset. I figured it must because my mom was upset and I have always been WAY TOO empathetic for my own good. The more I thought about it the more I realized I was not upset because my mother was; I was upset because I felt like a piece of my childhood was being taken away from me. I have not hardly spoken to this aunt in more than a decade yet I hear she is dying and I feel like that 15 year old girl whose cousin told her that her aunt cannot stand her and thinks she is a drug addicted slut. I felt all of the pain of that come back like it was happening again. I may not care about the person she is now, but I still care about the person I thought she was back then and it taught me that life is too short to hold on to grudges and anger. I let one of the best relationships I had turn to hate because of her gossip. I should have confronted her about it and set the record straight. I should have forgiven her long ago instead of waiting to hear that she was dying to do so because now it seems empty and fake just like we have been to one another.

From this day one I will try to live my life like I was dying. I want to love more, hate less, anger slower, forgive quickly and live my life every single day like it may be my last because you never know when it will be. I don’t want to find myself in this situation again where someone is dying and it takes the reality of that fact to shine light on my hardheaded stubbornness and to see that it was nothing but a waste. I do not do many things well or for long periods of time with the exception of holding a grudge. I think it is time to change that from a grudge to forgiveness.