One Bad Apple…

I recently got back from a trip to my birth state, Maryland, to visit my great grandmother (she is the one with the red hair). It’s odd, I have no living grandmothers, but I have a living great grandmother, go figure.  She had called and very nicely asked my family and me to come to a “crab feast.” Now, I’m sure we all have heard of Maryland blue crabs, and a crab feast is eating your weight in them with delicious Old Bay seasoning and Maryland sweet corn. I actually hadn’t seen her in almost a decade (makes you feel old, huh?) so I decided to go and booked the flight. My grandfather later called and said that the crab feast was a cover for a surprise party that they were having for my great grandmother’s 86^th birthday, so I was even happier that I agreed to go. It was probably the single best family visit (I got to see both my father and mother’s sides of extended family) that I have ever had. Now I’m going to say why, but it does get a little personal, so just FYI.

My grandmother on that side passed away within the past two years. She is honestly the single reason that I avoided that entire side of the family. She wasn’t a nice person and continually stirred up trouble at family gatherings, whether it be by being negative and making everyone else miserable, misconstruing what other people say to cause a fight or just being all around nasty. I’m not all that sure why she did those things, but I found from a very young age that I could avoid those negative situations by excluding myself from family gatherings. There were a few reasons why this wasn’t nipped by other family members or myself. Firstly, she had a very strong personality that was difficult to “reckon with.” In addition, she simply wouldn’t allow anyone to meet with anyone in the family without her present. The biggest reason that we couldn’t fix this type of behavior was that the people around her were entirely too kind and tolerant of it. Being kind to her made it so that people like me avoided family gatherings, which is rather sad. 

I know too many people to count that have the same or a similar situation on their hands:  A family member that controls the feelings and overall situation during gatherings and is typically negative and dramatic. I have a few words of advice on what to try when dealing with that situation, because I lost so much time with my family because of that ONE person (or bad apple). If my grandmother was still here, I would have talked to her ALONE about what was going on. Normally confrontation erupted because of something she did, so she argued that issue rather than the bigger one. I would also have talked to my family without her present to see what they thought about it. I sincerely do not know what they think about her, and I’m almost afraid to ask after so much time has passed. I would try to come to some sort of agreement with the family and the negative member, but I know this can only happen a fraction of the time. This is the hard part now: DON’T TOLERATE IT. If a family member is keeping you from the rest of your family, don’t let them. Meet with family members on your own time if you can’t do the confrontation bit (which has never been a problem for me) but DO NOT EVER let someone keep you from experiencing what you want to experience with your family or life in general.