On Tuesday of this week my niece buried her second husband. It was her 49th Birthday. Her first husband died of lung cancer around ten years ago, it was horrific.
This was different, it was a shocking death. Her husband, Tom was the picture of health, only 41 years old. He got up early in the morning on a day that was supposed to be the first day of a vacation. He died of heart failure. My niece, her two children, his two children, his mom and his twin and nine other siblings and the rest of us are left behind.
My niece, is the daughter of my late brother in law, Stan. She came here from St. Louis, her father was black and her mother white. Her father's nickname for her was Sis. She works full time and trains dogs for her volunteer job working with the County Sheriff's Search and Rescue.
I've mentioned many times that I come from a multi-racial family. You don't know the half of it! We are America's petri dish. We are Black, White, Hispanic, Native American from two sources, our polygamist past and from our Mexican family. We are Utah, Italian, Missouri, Louisiana, Ohio, Military, pacifist, theists and atheists.
We are a matriarchy.
The women are the foundation of our family, without us there would be no cohesion. We make the calls, set the menus, remember the birthdays and know who is fighting with who. We are the ones who make sure that we get together and we are the ones who make that happen. We are cement, we take our job seriously.
The germ of this diary came to me as I watched the pillars of our family come together once again, this time to bury one of our own. We entered the funeral home, all the colors that human flesh can be, some of us dressed casually, some dressed as only African American women can, hats that seem to lift to heaven itself. Our men were as striken as we were, but they did as all men do in these situations. They grouped together to talk about work, the weather, sports, anything to keep the grief from flowing out.
One by one, we got up to talk of Tom and what he meant to us. Tom's step daughter told us all how she hated him when he first began dating her mom, he wasn't her Daddy! When they decided to marry is was she that Tom asked for Sis' hand in marriage. Now, she feels as if she lost her advisor, her son's grandfather. Once again her world was knocked out of orbit.
Tom's twin, flown in from Afghanistan, spoke with the searing pain that only an identical twin can have. Tom's son stood in front of his estranged father's flag drapped coffin, (Tom was a CPO in the Navy), and realized that sometimes things that are torn can never be mended. As strong as we women are, we can't keep all things together.
I realized that our Matriarchy stands on the solid base of our men. Together we weave our family into balance.
We Kossacks are a petri dish of America. We are all colors, all permutations of gender, we are young and we are old. We are passionate and wise and sometimes silly. We can be the pillars of a new country, women and men.
We will stand behind Hope and a New Political Future or we will stand behind The First Woman President. I know without doubt we will not stand behind the Gangsters of War. But, as we set the path ahead let's not rip apart something that we cannot mend. We are better than that.