Oh, man . . . where do I start? My parents treated themselves like recovering alcoholics (wouldn't touch the stuff) because of what they saw from various uncles and great uncles--stuff like playing russian roulette with family members, putting up a young teenage daughter in a poker game and losing to a scoundrel (she escaped running barefoot down the road; a kind person picked her up and her life went on to be much happier). A great-great grandfather was a pretty high up union boss and took my great grandmother with him to the White House when she was a little girl, but later lost his mind when his son died. He disappeared off the grid for years until my great grandmother randomly found herself in an elevator with him by chance accident. She fainted. Also, she inherited some uncut diamonds (he was a world traveler) that got handed down . . . I know they exist because certain family members have seen them, but my uncle who was executor of my grandparent's estate and not well suited for the job died before passing them out . . . he, like my grandparents, was a bit of a collector/hoarder and no one has the foggiest clue what he did with them, or even if the diamonds were of any real quality.

That uncle was also a travelling evangelical prophet (no, I don't want to discuss those complexities and would rather you not either . . . not up for disentangling religion and loved ones today) who prophesied that my parents were going to go to [a country in Asia; don't want to doxx myself with too much info] to see about becoming missionaries. So my parents left my siblings and I for a month to go overseas and check it out. They loved it and for the rest of my years in high school I was freaked out about them suddenly up and whisking all of us away to a 3rd world living situation because they couldn't leave the idea alone, and well, there's a lot more to that story; in short, it didn't happen and eventually I got therapy.

When my uncle got diagnosed with stage four cancer a couple years ago he and his family opted for herbal treatments and prayer. I thought they'd just decided it wasn't worth doing chemo and had accepted the inevitable outcome, but apparently it came to a surprise they day he went into hospice and had 24 hours to live. Weirdly, there was no body/urn at the funeral service but no one wanted to ask my aunt what happened to him. (Turns out he was cremated). At the service, a whole bunch of people got up and talked about how my uncle's words were true, but only one or two actually told real stories about him. Much later, my aunt decided to bury his ashes at a little church out in the middle of nowhere that no one in the family has ever attended, but she said the church allowed free burials to people who had connections to the area. The family went out one Sunday afternoon (I was out of town) and picked out a nice spot, pacing it off so they could remember where to put the marker later. However, the sticks and stuff they put up got washed away and his widow remarried a controlling guy and has more or less left her whole previous life behind. My deceased uncle's sister freaked out that we lost my uncle, and went to the church to ask if they knew he was buried. Turns out, they had no idea about any of this and were shocked themselves! Apparently, my uncle's widow (who's a bit flakey on stuff like paperwork and communication) didn't have permission to bury him in their cemetery after all and now no one knows where he is.

My uncle's sister is all kinds of freaked out too because my uncle may not be facing east, and as we all know, that's the direction Christ will be calling from during the resurrection. (Which in my mind begs several questions . . . if you're cremated, which direction are you facing anyway? And how could everyone across the globe travel east to one central point? And if God can resurrect bodies from the dead, why can't he spin them around to face whatever direction is necessary?) Then again, this is the aunt who explained to me that Dr. Fauci was the one who invented Covid in China and that the vaccine, which isn't really a vaccine anyway--it's just aborted fetuses to create abortion demand--changes your DNA.

I could go on, but am in the process of writing a book, and what I have already is far too long for a post. For those of you who may be worried about me, I would like to add that as weird as they all are, I at least grew up in a loving family which is more than a lot of people can say. I like to think I turned out okay, even if I did end up going to college for the sake of an education instead of an MRS degree and turned into . . . gasp! a Democrat.

Oh, and I'm also a descendent of a murder, so I've got that going for me. I don't know hardly any details because no one would talk about it, save for my grandmother who was becoming more and more progressive the older she got (miss you lots, G.). She revealed it a couple years before she died but didn't have many details herself. My relative was white, the victim was Black, and it happened at a time in the South in which that sort of thing was overlooked. I don't think the Legacy Museum in Alabama is interested in what little info I have because they didn't call me back, but if anyone has any ideas on what to do with it, I'm all ears. It just seems wrong that my relative should get away with it and not even have his name associated with the atrocity he committed. Sadly I don't know the victim's name (or even the location of the murder), but still.