By Kelly Mahan Jaramillo, August 19th, 2009
There is an update at the bottom of this post as of Nov 11th, 2009
After hating and not speaking to my sister Shannon Mahan and my mother Patte Wheat Levan for seven years, today I found out that I love them! Well, for a nanosecond, anyway. It’s better than nothing, I suppose.
People change, and since I have not spoken to them in seven years, I do not know them any more. How can you hate someone you do not know? (Well, when you run across some of their old letters and e-mails, it is kind of easy).
I mean, besides some politicians, some actors, or that jackass on the freeway who is speeding and blaring his horn at you then roars around you, flipping you off – how can you hate a stranger?
In all seriousness, something happened today. I found out I love my sister and my mother. I still do not want to talk to them, nor do I miss them, but I love them. In the way one can love a stranger, I guess. For a fleeting moment.
Go figure.
UPDATE: It is nearing Thanksgiving, and it is this time last year when my brother contacted me briefly to let me know that my Aunt had passed away. Weeks later, my sister invited me to the cremation, which was in two days. She is fully aware that I live across the country.
The email, below, starts at the bottom and works it’s way up to our brief exchange, the last one from Shannon so ridiculously stupid and nasty that I did not bother responding. But on this upcoming year anniversary of my Aunt’s death, and my sister’s subsequent duplicitous actions, I felt it was time to post the lovely e-mail she sent me, because here is the deal.
I have to be honest, I try my best to remember fun things about her, but the overall picture of her as a human being is pretty repulsive to me, and I have a hard time feeling anything close to “love”. In this original post, I had a brief moment of feeling “at one” and was silly enough to write about it, but it is not a static state of grace, just a momentary sense of connection.
Roaming about in these earthly bodies and minds, largely comprised of day-to-day living and past experience, I cannot in any way, shape, or form, say in all honesty that I love Shannon Mahan.
Below is our e-mail exchange. Perhaps it will give you a glimpse as to why I feel the way I do.
It is a bit hard to read, and the cut off is simply the address of the cremation spot, but as you can see, when I answer Shannon’s writing that she has no control over what Kerrigan does, and she is sorry I was told in the way I was, I write back that I had no problem with how Kerrigan told me, and it was nice to be told when Aunt had died.
Her last paragraph is where the real Shannon comes roaring out. She informs me that she did not have time to inform me, ha ha, instructs me to remember that this is not about ME.
(you may want to refer to the e-mail above, where Shannon is rhapsodizing about the wonderful ceremony she is going to provide for Aunt, strewing her body with fresh flowers, heaping it with loving cards and letters and photos – yeah, it is clearly not all about me. It kind of seems to be all about HER!).
My favorite, however, is when she perches herself on her throne, adjusting her crown, and informs me that I have:
“excommunicated myself, and with that comes the forfeiture of normal expectations”
Uhh, okay. I was going to write back to her, just to let her know that one cannot excommunicate oneself, and this is a religious term, generally meant for a priest who has done a grave disservice to the Church, and the Bishop or Pope excommunicates said priest, but I was doubled over from laughing, and when I was finished wiping my eyes, I realized she was the same old bore that she has always been, and I had no intention of ending my evening engaging in one more word towards her. Just took a screenshot of the e-mail, and bounced the original back.
However, I stumbled across the snapshot of the original e-mail, and felt that perhaps it was time to extend poor old Shannon a lifeline in the writing arena.
To help Shannon Mahan’s religious edification along, here is the Dictionary definition:
Form of censure by which a member of a religious body is excluded from the congregation of believers and from the rites of the church. Excommunication has been used in various religions, notably Christianity, as a punishment for grave offenses such as heresy . In Roman Catholicism an excommunicated person is barred from receiving the sacraments and from burial in consecrated ground. The offender may be absolved by a priest (in some cases, only by a bishop or the pope) and received back into the church after confessing his or her sin and doing penance for it. In Protestant denominations other terms, such as “church discipline,” may be attached to essentially the same censure. Although now seldom used, the practice of herem in Judaism was a form of excommunication that excluded people from the community for prescribed times or forbade them from hearing the Torah. The term is also applied to the expulsion of Buddhist monks from the sangha.
So…..I am not aware of when our family became a Church, and Shannon Mahan became the Pope, but this is what happens when you stay away too long, I guess.
So, to help my poor sister Shannon Mahan, here is a little tip – a person cannot excommunicate themselves. As you can tell by the above, this is not only a religious form of punishment, it is punishment that has to be administered by someone else. It is simply not possible for me to have excommunicated myself. Someone else has to do it.
Let me explain this to you in layman’s terms. I could no more excommunicate myself anymore than a man can give himself a blow job. He needs someone else to do it. Does this help you “get it” at all?
Is it starting to sink in how incredibly stupid you come off in writing that to me? I am just trying to help you for your future nasty bitchy e-mails – try not to come off looking like a total fool. The insult rarely hits the mark, it just makes the intended target fall down laughing.
Let’s try to get acquainted with our Dictionary next time we fire off a spiteful little missive, okay?
Cheerio, sweetie!
