My Amy Ferris

Yesterday was a first for me. I have this friend Amy who writes a wonderful blog and I follow it religiously. She is clever and kind and oh so talented. She wrote a book Marrying George Clooney and is involved in a million projects but that is not what I am writing about today. She wrote a blog two days ago with sadness about her brother who she is estranged from since the death of their mother two years ago. She misses him and wrote how she wonders how it had gotten so bad that they stopped talking. All of a sudden her brother wrote on her blog (something she didn't even think he knew about). He came out swinging and punching and basically started calling all her stories fiction and that he, the big older brother, knew the truth. As you can imagine this didn't set well with Amy or her friends (I being one). I lashed back and so did about 48 others. We regaled stories of Amy's honesty towards us and how her truth might not be his but both should be allowed to have theirs. He differed and continued vomiting for most of the day. And I continued to comment. He started sending out missives to some of us on her blog. He chastised me and told me I was so completely wrong and that his truth was how it really went down. I tried in my best mediated way to explain that there are really three sides to a story-hers, his and the third side where the truth must actually occur. He was relentless and so was I. I battled him all day thinking and reacting and responding. Amy called and wondered if she should respond and I stopped her on numerous occasions and said let your friends defend you and protect you and show you love. Amy patiently waited for two days to write another blog and then compared her relationship with her brother with the current debt ceiling fight. It was brilliant. During the day I analyzed my reaction to all of this sibling rivalry and realized that I was so blessed to get along with my sister. We don't think alike or act alike or have any of the same friends or interests but we try not to judge and just deal with our mother in the best way we each can do. We divided the tasks of helping with a very impaired Mom who has dementia. We are lucky she can afford great care but it takes managing and my sister and I see eye to eye on all of it and when we don't we rarely get heated. We try and stay attentive to our needs first and that of our family and then my Mom since relatively speaking she is being taken care of comfortably. I also know how easy it was for me to defend my friend and go mono y mono with her brother. I tend to believe that everyone has a say but without judgment when it comes to family but usually judging is easier with family than outsiders. The pain is often replaced with laughter about how all this family shit works. We try to do better than our parents and I am sure my grown sons have been and will again be on the couch for reasons different than I was because I did try and not repeat my parents mistakes. But mistakes are always made within families. I felt good when the day ended yesterday and when I let the "brother" know I would respond each and every time, I think he gave up. He was done vomiting anyway. As for Amy she handled a very public outing as the true, wonderful, honest person she is and didn't engage. Her blog talked about sadness and missing and totally was expressing her feelings without judgment. Her brother could just not do the same. I loved myself yesterday for my defense of a friend in the only way I could with love and words.