![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Last Thursday I drove home for a funeral for my great aunt. I was never close with her, and I only really have two memories of interactions. Once I was looking for my brother and didn't knock, just barged right into her house and then stopped dead. This is a severe prairie style woman, and she looked like the type of person to have a guillotine and was willing to use it on any misbehaving children. I ran for my life and left brother to his fate. The other is that she did the best Easter dinner for the extended family with this f-ing amazing fried chicken.
But there are complications. Even when everyone was alive and they lived right next to my grandparents there was no crossover. They did not join each other for dinner and at church the best they gave each other was a nod. When her husband died she couldn't deal with being alone and remarried in less than six months which her family wasn't pleased with. But this is where she committed the cardinal sin.
She married into a doing fine for themselves Mexican family.
The OK panhandle is not the most diverse or intermingled place. So now my side of the family (though not my immediate family, Dad always stood by her to make her own decisions) is warring with the family who accepted her on her second husband's side. Land, oil rights, cattle, money and a house is all being pulled in several different directions. complicating things is that she did get mean and confused, having memory issues for years before she died.
IDK, that funeral might have been half Dallas and half West Side Story and I would have really enjoyed myself eating popcorn on the sideline except that I was one of only three people still wearing a mask.
I tried to help my Dad and the one cousin I actually like, but the best part was that the church lunch reminded me that this Catalina/frito/bean salad thing exists and I made it for dinner.
But there are complications. Even when everyone was alive and they lived right next to my grandparents there was no crossover. They did not join each other for dinner and at church the best they gave each other was a nod. When her husband died she couldn't deal with being alone and remarried in less than six months which her family wasn't pleased with. But this is where she committed the cardinal sin.
She married into a doing fine for themselves Mexican family.
The OK panhandle is not the most diverse or intermingled place. So now my side of the family (though not my immediate family, Dad always stood by her to make her own decisions) is warring with the family who accepted her on her second husband's side. Land, oil rights, cattle, money and a house is all being pulled in several different directions. complicating things is that she did get mean and confused, having memory issues for years before she died.
IDK, that funeral might have been half Dallas and half West Side Story and I would have really enjoyed myself eating popcorn on the sideline except that I was one of only three people still wearing a mask.
I tried to help my Dad and the one cousin I actually like, but the best part was that the church lunch reminded me that this Catalina/frito/bean salad thing exists and I made it for dinner.
