15 February 2007

Family Poop

Lets start by saying while she is my little sister and I have to love her, she is so far in the dog house with the family, I'm unsure how to recover from this.

Since her husband passed last April, I assumed my siuster was trying to get her life back together, along with her two kids. But, I've learned, especially after four years that her husband was sick, that my little sister is a liar and not be trusted.

While it was obvious to all that she was stuck in a loveless marriage, for perhaps, the last decade she was married, after her husband was given the cancer notice, she tried her vainest to keep him alive. Now, maybe, I see why. He was her meal ticket (when he worked).

Don't get me wrong, she did work and go to school, but I'm unsure of her grades, as she claims they are good. Now, after the past 10 days, I begin to wonder if my little sister is just not to be trusted.

let me backtrack a bit. About a good 20 years.

Dawn was maybe 19 at the time. She was working for Giant Auto in Hoffman Estates -ironically, my brother had worked for them, and at the same store. There she meet a man about 18 years her senior, who (though I'm still not sure) was seperated from his wife. Kurt (or John as we would eventually know him as) has two kids, just a few years younger than Dawn.

Anyway, my sister began to have an affair with him, something she tried to hide. At this point, I guess, one could say that both my sisters were looking for "daddy" figures in their lives. Having lost our father at such a young age (Dawn was not yet 4), they both seemed to find comfort in men way older than them.

Once everyone found out about Dawn and John, well, all hell broke loose. My mom ruled her house with an iron fist, and she took no shit from no one. She tried her hardest to stop Dawn from seeing this guy, which would, in hindsight, push Dawn farther away.

One thing led to another and Dawn and John moved to New Mexico. During that time, Dawn kept in contact with big sister Donna, so we found out that Dawn had married John after his divorce and was now pregnant. During the months before Steven's birth, things between my Mom and Dawn eased. My mom still hated John, but she loved her daugther.

Steven arrived into the world on September 18, twenty-five years and one day after mine. Donna and mom went to New Mexico. Almost a year later, Dawn and John moved back to Chicago, and with the aide of the baby, things seemed to get better. I still don't think my mom ever trusted John, but she tolerated him, if only because Dawn was back with her grandchild.

They settled in (I moved to California), had another child in September of 1991, Kyra, and things went on, as they are bound to do. I moved back 18 months later.

But there was always tension, and me and my little sister tried to get along. It seems that Dawn and me were never destined to nothing more than brother and sister -the same thing I have with my older brother. Only Donna and I seemed to be more than just siblings. We were best buds also.

So, over the next decade, John and Dawn would give Steven an Kyra everything they wanted, as if John was making up for all the things he never gave his kids from his first marriage (and I often wonder if they ever became jealous of their half brother and sister). But somewhere along the line, both fell out of love with each other. And, I think Dawn realized she was stuck.

And then came the lies, the deception of not paying bills, of letting things slide to the point that I began to question things in my mind. But instead of asking, or some might say prying into her life, I ignorned some obvious things.

And then cancer struck, and the long slide into death for John began, and Dawn's family slowly began to unwind like a broken yoyo; no one was there to tug it back up.

To be continued...

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