Boo. Go away people.

My g'pa was diagnosed with lung cancer two weeks ago. I had decided to go see him over Xmas weekend, thinking he had a month or more left. Turns out, my ever-communicating father told me after the fact that his father had taken a severe turn for the worst over the last week. With him being with Hospice only nine days, my grandpa is dead.

I am unhappy that my father didn't communicate that the days were so limited. I would have tried to bump up our visit.

Of course, the big volunteer event I've put a thousand man hours into is this week and I am having to cancel it and reinvent the wheel next month. I had wanted to do one thing at a time and was led to believe that it would be okay to wait. My brain is exploding with all I need to undo.

I asked that my father schedule the funeral late in the week, but of course there was no way that something would be planned around my schedule, the one coming the farthest.

Next, my sister called to bitch me out and said that she'd share a hotel room with us. I dared to bitch back, then was told it all centers around me - I wanted to ask if she just has stock phrases for arguments, as she wasn't making a lot of sense within our given conversation with her cliches. By the end, I said that I didn't know if I'd be going to the funeral, but I did know I would not be sharing a room with her. Her high horse gave nose bleeds.

I didn't get it about her hostility, but I was tempted at one point to ask whether she'd been drinking. She well could have let her call end at goading me into driving there, because G'pa somehow deserves my respect, but she had to go many places she had no right going, lots of salt and lots of wounds. I told her that me attending a funeral had nothing to do with the respect I felt for my grandfather. Heck, I'd already paid huge respect by preparing his genealogical info to share with other genealogists. That's my best way to honor him, to make sure he's remembered properly.

In more out of this world news, I don't know how she was privy to my income amount or my income streams, but she slammed me for not working, when she apparently has to work 40-45 hours per week to earn the same - she's an RN and I think if she kept the same job for more than six months, she'd have earned some raises, but I didn't say that. I asked her not to be jealous of my lifestyle, but it is set up this way for a reason. She freaked about the jealousy comment, but then she would believe no supporting evidence I could provide back when she'd talked herself into a corner. Then she had the audacity to challenge whether I'd considered moving, when I said how expensive the market I live in is, but I am keeping my son near his father for now. I didn't ask for her scrutiny or input. I hated feeling like I needed to defend myself, but she spoke such craziness.

I do not know where her hostility came from and I will not be so cliche as to say it is misplaced grief for our grandfather. It was much more than that and incredibly inappropriate.

A part of her attack revolved around me saying that I don't really have the money to come visit and pay for a hotel, especially at this time of year. That got no respect, but then she's been the most recent of us to lose a house to foreclosure... um, not that I ever have. Fucktard - that she would tell me how to spend my money is absurd.

As a result, my son and I will drive many, many hours there, purposefully arrive 10 minutes late for the funeral, sit at the back, and leave. I do not want to sit with the family. I feel no kinship with them. I did like this grandfather. He was a sweet man with a big heart, a ready smile, and a henpecking wife whose attitude trickles down.

I need to come to terms with this process somehow: to make boundaries that are then highly criticized, to offer olive branches, but to really only want to do so half way, i.e. it is not attractive to me to stay in a hotel room with her. I don't want to drive 25 hours this week out of spite. If it were one on one with my grandfather, I could handle that. One on mass of hostile relatives just won't feel good.