Difficult weekend

It's so weird that I saw this on Facebook the last day of our big weekend... The weekend was exactly what I thought it was going to be: it was repeatedly awkward, it was not comfortable, and it was not really enjoyable. My kids were frustrated because they expected people to be more kind and more concerned about them - not a single person the entire weekend asked any of them if they were OK or how they were doing. It's a choice that the family members made to ignore the pain that has been caused and it's very telling. I only had one person, a friend of the mom, who asked me how I was doing and told me she was impressed with how I had handled it - no one in the family has ever said anything even close to this to me.

Interestingly, He Who Shall Not Be Named was completely erased from the weekend - he was not invited, his pictures did not appear in the "family" slideshow, he was never mentioned. I found it rather odd that his sister was willing to eliminate him to this extent. She has only one sibling, she has only one child, her favorite aunt died last year. All the grandparents are dead other than her mom. Her mom and dad each had only one sister, they are both dead. You'd think, with so many people in the family gone, there might be some allowance made for the prodigal son. I'm not at all sorry that he wasn't there, and he totally deserves to be shunned. It's more what it says about a family that is willing to kick someone out this way, while preaching about kindness and making the world a better place.

The silver lining is that the 5 of us (me, Alana, Matt, Cal, and Naomi) had a marvelous time together, hanging out, getting food, chillin. Cal said we should have just taken a vacation to Louisville together and skipped the family event. He suggested we have Thanksgiving at an AirBnB in Philadelphia (I love that idea).