Other

I realized something on the drive home tonight. My family is becoming other.

I felt so whitebread growing up. Normal, white, middle-class, Baptist upbringing. Tonight I just realized that this sense I've had lately of "not in my family" started changing long ago. I hearing classmates in elementary school talk about their stepbrothers and stepsisters. I found that concept very foreign and other. Later, my parents divorced and I gained numerous step-siblings. Less whitebread.

Years later, my sister-in-law tragically died leaving behind a two and a half year old daughter and a severely handicapped newborn to her husband of seven years. Horrible things like that just don't happen. Almost five years later, the infant - no longer a baby - died.

And now, my uncle is missing and assumed dead. The circumstances around his disappearance are suspect, leaving his cousin - my second cousin - as the prime suspect. A bloody mattress left in my uncle's car and abandoned on the other side of town. His medication and oxygen left in the apartment they shared. Lies to neighbors on his where-abouts.

These are the stories of Lifetime movies and Law and Order episodes - not my family.