both & neither

Talk about a cuckoo in a robin's nest!  The combination of my personal dynamic & the rest of my surviving family was disaster waiting to happen.  Where I've always had to sing out the situation in front of me  - so well illustrated by my question to Ken Stroh after Ian was killed - they were, as Kerry aptly put it, happiest with their heads buried in the sand.  Two extremes of the communication spectrum.

After teaching a Health unit based on four generations of my family - grandparents, parents, self & sibs, nieces & nephs - would ask the students, "MY style was verbal & very direct; the surviving others were non-verbal & triangulated.  Which communication style is right  & which is wrong?"  It always blew them away that the correct answer was "both" and "neither" - each style worked, in its own way.  

There are a bunch of core issues I'm working through in the here & now, some of which reach back into the long, long ago.  They involve my looking at the perception I had of things apparently done & said.  Some are easy to say, "Yes, I see this or that happened."  A lot are up for conjecture or interpretation or even individual memory.  All are important.  

It helps to know that probably NONE of what I might share agrees with what my sibs experienced perceived remembered.  Peter remembers leaving home when he went away to college - and never coming back.  Mim recalls that while I offered to do things for her, she never took me up on it & forge through life without my proffered support.  Kerry considers that the care I provided Mom was no more & no less than any one of the rest of the gave.  Mike agrees with whatever Kerry thinks.  Whitney  & Reynolds have such ghastly memories of me, she unfriended me on Facebook & he never accepted my friend request.  Who knows what Scott & Karen feel (am grateful for the warm FB friendships that have developed).  

Who are right, who are wrong?  Both & neither.  All I can say is that these will be my stories, and I'm sticking with them.