Daddy Issues

I've been turning over in my head all of the events from last week, trying to piece together something to say about them.

There were a lot of fun moments with the kids. For example, my maternal grandparents live with my uncle, his wife and their 3 year old son. Currently my uncle's family is spending six months living in the UK, so there are scads of toys and no one to play with them. Having recently discovered trains, Sam was in his glory since my cousin is also a train fanatic. Despite taking nearly half his collection overseas with him, Sam had over 200 toy trains to delight him. He even shared with his sister! Since we kept referring to my grandparents as Grammy and Pappy W. he would constantly ask to 'Go W Mommy' any time we got in the car.

But most of the time was spent, at least in some part, dealing with the funeral and the family. Which was not fun, as you can imagine. And actually, the funeral wasn't all that bad. It was more the damn family that made things sticky.

You see, we haven't had a relationship with SOB's father B and step-mother A in over 5 years. All that time ago, A decided that she needed to be the top dog in B's life and if his kids didn't like it they could suck it. Now none of the kids had ever really gotten along with A that well, and they all thought that their dad would try and work out a compromise, but, well, not so much. We all got letters in the mail that said we could call them when we were ready to start kissing ass.

Naturally, that ended up being the end of things.

Two years ago, when Sam was just 3 months old, I was visiting my parents alone. I called B and tried to arrange a meeting but I was summarily shut down. I wrote more about it here, if you care to delve deeper into the drama. The long and short of it was that I was hurt. Before the rejection had been mostly aimed at SOB, but now I was the one in the sights. Ever since then I have been particularly bitter about the entire arrangement.

So just imagine what my face must have looked like when I walked into the funeral home and A grabs me, hugs and kisses me, and tells me how happy she is to see me.

Yeah, it was probably worse than what you can imagine.

Since SOB was there before me and the kids, he warned me that they were pushing for a reconciliation. Pushing hard, no doubt. The cornered him in a side room off the main parlor and spent half an hour bending his ear about it. When we arrived, he met us outside. We only had a few minutes to speak to each other before we went in, but I made it very clear that while I was open to a discussion, the kids were off limits to them. They could talk with them, but no one was holding or kissing my kids until we got a few things ironed out.

I know that sounds petty and mean, but I feel as though if they truly want to have a relationship with our family, they have to earn their way back in. None of this 'Oh sorry about that whole rejecting you for half a decade. Now let's have a hug, ok?'

Plus they told SOB that the main reason they were trying to work things out with us is because they found god, and they want to help us towards salvation or some other bullshit. I get enough of that from my own parents.

So what should I do, oh wise internets?

Blah.

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