Dear Sanity,
A life lesson has come to me and I want to share. I was raised
with the notion; you need to be everything to everyone to family. I learned
later that this is not completely true, nor could anyone be able to do that
completely and wholly. You can relate to a lot of people, but no one can be
everyone’s cup of tea. When I entered retail, I learned that you can't please everyone,
but you can touch and influence most in one way or another. Both concepts were
conflicting to me and to my life and had brought me a lot of pain and torment
in my earlier days.
I struggled on how to be well rounded and balanced daughter, wife,
mother, friend, sister and so on. This was hell for me in my teens and twenties
until Rita appeared in my life. She was introduced to me through the university
I attended, and through Mom’s work. Rita and I had similar stories about
getting pregnant and getting married, even up through divorcing our husbands.
She had forged a friendship with Mom in a way I couldn’t.
Let me explain a bit, Mom had tried to bond with me in ways she
knew and understood. I wasn’t interested in those ways, and frankly the idea
was foreign to me. I didn’t understand how one could spend a day shopping,
luncheon, shopping more than going home. I didn’t get hanging out at coffee
places, the smells would get me sick. As a teenager, of course, I rebelled.
This didn’t give Mom much to grow on with me, or the willingness to understand
me and why I was confused by this bonding. I had been struggling and fighting
for years on how to be everything to everyone within the family while knowing I
couldn’t always please them.
Rita filled that void. She walked into a strained relationship and
put herself in between us. She became what Mom wanted and needed; and Mom
became something she had needed as well. She had lost her mother, and Mom filled
that void. It was the best thing that each of them could handle and each of
them could deal with. Rita understood and spoke Mom’s language very well. I was
happy that they both found each other they could grow and evolve with. It took
a hell of a lot of pressure off me.
Why am I going on about this? What’s the point? Rita passed on
three days ago and I just found out last night. For twenty plus years, she had
put herself into a family that didn’t know how to communicate with each other
and communicated in a way that helped us all. I learned that the statement
of being everything to everyone even to family was false, and that was okay. It
wasn’t about me nor about how I communicated. It boiled down to not being meant
for that role. Had that lesson been brought to me earlier in my life, things
might have been different. It was a lesson I had to learn, nonetheless.
In this lesson of my own, I wanted to share it with you. Knowing
when you are can be something to someone and when you can’t, even with family.
It’s okay when you know that you can’t help someone. It’s okay when you can
understand you aren’t someone’s cup of tea and allow someone else that
opportunity.
Please don’t be jealous, I know that I was asked several times
throughout the years. I wasn’t, nor could I be. They had needs and wants that
fit so well together, that there was no need for it. It didn’t lessen Mom’s
love for me and gave my Mom something a bit more in her own world. I know hat
in Rita’s life, Mom gave her a sense of stability and motherliness she lacked
in her own life.
I’m saddened that Rita’s story had to end, however grateful to her
for what she had done for Mom. Please take the time to tell those you know and
care about you love them. You never know when they will go. Rita was only 42,
fit and had the world ahead of her. She, from what I was told, died in her
sleep.
Sincerely Yours,
I love you (ICH LIEBE DICH)
Junie
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