My sister just left; she came over to use my computer since the internet connection in her own still isn't working. Why is it that when the professionals DO fix the machine it takes about twenty minutes but in order to have one to fix the computer it takes about three months?
Anyway, my sister is my primary source when it comes to the family matters. I'm not myself too close to my brother or to my mother and I think my grandparents find me slightly intimidating. So my sister fills me in whenever something happens.
A little background information first: now that my father is dead, the house in which I grew up, located approximately 25 kilometres from the central area of the small town, is empty. The house was built by my father's grandfather (I think...) and was then owned by my father's father and then by my father. Now it's an enormous problem to my father's parents that none of us, the children, wants to go there and live in there. Obviously I have no interest to live there; all the memories about my childhood would eventually make me go berserk and I don't even have a profession that would allow me to keep a house and the forests and such; besides, my grandparents being so fucking conventional they would half-force me to have a fucking husband who I should "trick" to live there with me and keep farming as has been done so far. As if! My sister (surprise, surprise) doesn't care living there and my brother hasn't even been there after he left after his own suicide attempt a week before my father's final repose.
In spite of being well aware of our interest in moving there, my father's parents, my grandmother mainly, keep asking which one of us is going to go there. When it finally sank in her mind that none of us is going to live there again, she began to call to different people who are somehow related to us. First she called to my brother's trustee (he's still a minor so he legally needed one for the heritage thing) who lives in the same village in which we grew up; she asked him to buy the house and the grounds for some reason, and while ignoring his legal confidentiality demanded to know about the heritage ('perunkirjoitukset') thing at the bank a while ago. I don't know what it was but she would have wanted to know how much my father owned and how much my mother gets (she seems to be the main reason to my father's suicide in my grandmother's humble opinion; she actually called my mother a murderer when they were discussing with the priest about my father's funeral). She also wanted to know if my mother's parents ("Takahikiän hyeenat" as she keeps calling them; apparently there is some bad blood between them for being from a different town...) were present there (no; only the widow and the children and the trustee of the minor were allowed to be there, actually, in addition to the bank guy) and why they weren't asked to come there as well.
After my brother's trustee had convinced her that he is not going to buy the house and the rest, she phoned H, the father of the family who used to be our neighbours, also related to us somehow. Anyway, she had asked, or demanded more like, him to buy the house to "keep it in the family". His reply: 'No. I already have a house, I don't need another one.' =) After this she returned to bug us, the children, and she keeps more or less subtly hinting some of us to move there, with very little success.
I'm trying to understand her (and my grandfather too; I'm sure he's in on it as well although it's my grandmother who does the talking and the rest). I guess she is desperately trying to cling the only material thing that connects her to her son. She has many times asked my sister to come with them to visit the place; I guess they're both getting physically bad of old age that they can't drive a car themselves (plus they need the keys and a permission from one of the owners... wau, I own a house... well, a quarter...but still). My sister has refused: she's afraid they might go completely insane there, since they haven't been too good mentally for several months.
In a way I understand my grandparents. They wish to keep the house in the family, so they would have a possibility to go there in the future as well, since it is the only thing in addition to memories they have of my father. But they haven't been mentally well; my grandmother has been leaving notes on my father's grave, she's been lying on the grave crying sometimes, whenever my siblings have visited her she's talked about our father non-stop. I myself am a person who likes to do things "for one last time" so in that respect I understand they would want to go there one more time, to get some kind of a closure to the matter, to finally fully understand that my father, their son, is dead and does not live there anymore.
On the other hand, I understand my sister's negligence. I'm sure my grandparents would collapse and lose it altogether, possibly for good. I just cannot see them walking through the premises merely crying; I'm convinced my grandmother would. My grandfather could have a heart attack or something similar; my grandmother might chain herself there or refuse to leave or just really go insane. I mean, it's the place where she brought him up. It's the place she and her husband half-forced their eldest son, my father, to take and farm (and I know that somewhere deep down they know he really didn't want to, that he was just playing the part of the dutiful son, which may have been one of the reasons behind his alcoholism). It's the place where he took his life.
What the hell am I to do with all of this? With them?
