Open Writing

Many, if not most folk in the US set great store by their extended families; unlike the England that I left 34 years ago, where, aside from parents and siblings, or perhaps a favorite aunt or uncle, the rest could go hang. Cousins were “out there somewhere.” Some of my father’s family lived but a few streets away and I never knew they existed until recently, which I agree is a little extreme, but not unique.

It seems that family grudges and slights are never forgiven, just passed down from generation to generation. In some cases the details are lost in the mists of time, but the strained relationship is nevertheless maintained. In many instances, the beliefs in, and causes of rifts are completely irrational. In one example, a family member was ostracized because she “killed” her husband when she wouldn’t give in to pressure from other family members to have her terminally ill spouse travel to Mexico to be treated with unconventional therapies.

Based on my own experiences, families in the US are closer; due, I believe, to their immigrant history. Typically, one family member, or perhaps a couple, came to America with the express intention of establishing a base and bringing over as many of their kin as possible. Sometimes it took years, but eventually they would achieve their goal, thus creating a lasting bond of indebtedness. Other families that had been scattered by war and persecution in their country of birth, miraculously found one another in the USA, sometimes a generation later.

Nevertheless, even such bonding doesn’t preclude family tensions. A favorite occasion for their expression is at weddings and funerals, where the gathering starts out with a degree of harmony, however feigned, only to lapse into acrimony with the help of a drink or two. By the end of the affair, arguments have deteriorated into pushing matches, and occasionally a fistfight in the parking lot, which only serves to perpetuate the grudge.

A common source of family rifts is money, sometimes because one branch has more than another, or because the expectations from a will are not realized. Similar situations arise over the distribution of a deceased relative’s belongings. Upon the dissolution of the household, heated claims are made for items that, supposedly, the owner had “promised” to an individual; claims that cannot be substantiated when there is nothing stated in writing.

Oftentimes a family can be riven by the introduction of an outsider who marries into it. Sides are taken by those who disapprove or approve of the match. This reaction is again mostly irrational, and the poor, unfortunate outsider and spouse, whether deserving or not, become family pariahs for the rest of their days.

I said earlier that I believed American families were in general closer than their European counterparts. That in its self can lead to some pretty impressive feuds. Probably the most celebrated is the strife between the Hatfields and the McCoys. These were two families living the Appalachian Mountain Range who engaged in a feud in the late 1800’s. They lived on opposite sides of a border stream, the Hatfields in West Virginia and the McCoys in Kentucky.

The feud may have originated with their opposing allegiances in the American Civil War, but nobody was certain, least of all the antagonists. The McCoys struck first 1882, with the murder of a Hatfield. This was followed by the murder of three McCoys. Retaliatory raids and murders continued over successive years with scant interference from the law. In 1888, a posse of McCoys led by a deputy sheriff captured nine Hatfields and took them to Kentucky to stand trial for murder. The feud eventually burned its self out in the 1920’s.

Next to money, I would think that religious beliefs probably account for the second largest cause of family schisms, sometimes tragically. All it takes is for one family member to marry outside the clan’s faith, or worse, to convert to another denomination, for problems to begin. Some of the most tragic examples involve extremist or fundamentalist religions, where initially, mother father and children embrace the new faith.

Later, the father or mother becomes disenchanted and withdraws, creating a gulf that often results in the children becoming pawns in the spiritual tug of war. Recently I read that many of the victims of the mass suicide of Jim Jones’ followers in Jonestown, Guyana were never claimed by their families.

In the end, I suppose it is the very ties that bind people genetically that are at the root of the stresses that cause family discord. A cat and a dog can sleep peacefully at either side of the hearth, but tie them together and see what happens.

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