The Silence Was a Choice - The Other Family Tradition

This isn't about one moment of silence, but generations of them.

For years, my husband and I lived in a cabin in the woods. This was our home:

It's the kind of place people daydream about when they’re stuck in traffic: deer in the yard, ducks on the lake, and a hammock swaying from the porch.

After years of navigating complicated family dynamics, we thought we had finally earned our 'reward'; we were finally getting back to what life looked like before raising kids and trying to blend our families. We could relax.

So naturally, everything blew right the hell up.  

Before the cabin and that illusion of peace, I’d spent the last stretch of my grandmother’s life back in my home state as her medical proxy, managing her care with my mother. It was a sacred kind of hell: long nights, impossible decisions, and a front-row seat to someone fading into a shell of herself.

Glioblastoma stole her words and abilities, but even though she couldn’t speak, she could still sing along to songs she loved. And somehow, she understood what we were saying to her, even if she couldn't respond.

When she passed away, none of us were with her. We were all in her house, but her son, sitting at her bedside, said nothing.

Nothing.

Instead, he called his wife in secret and waited for her to arrive. Once an LPN, though long retired, she insisted on being the one to “confirm” the obvious.

It never had sat right with her that Grandma had long ago named me the one to carry out the decisions her children and husband might not have had the strength for.

(Not that I was all that much better, mind you, but having her put that kind of complete trust in me gave me much-needed strength.)

I know my grandmother still understood us because even in that hospital bed, weak and fading, she cried as my aunt threatened lawyers and challenged her sanity.

I promised my grandmother, in front of everyone, that I would fight like hell for her. Thankfully, the rest of the family supported that.

But when Grandma slipped away, that woman seized both the control and the attention as if she were owed something out of all of this.

And in doing so, she and her husband deliberately stole the last chance my grandfather had to say goodbye to his wife of fifty-eight years.

In the years since, that same need for control tore our family to shreds. Two once-close siblings have been estranged for years, thanks to orchestrations by someone who thrives on division but hides behind a sweet, Christian façade.

The silence was a choice.
And if that makes anyone uncomfortable...maybe ask yourself why.