Family...and What It's Supposed to Mean

Note: To help preserve this person's privacy, their gender has been deliberately obscured.

I've been having an ongoing discussion with someone about family. What it is supposed to mean, and what it seems it has become. It ain't pretty.

Your family is supposed to be there to help support you in good times and bad.

That doesn't mean that if you've done something bad that they should be right there with the rah-rah speeches, but it does mean that if you're suddenly in a bad way through no fault of your own, that your family - your biological/legal family - should be right there to help you as much as possible.

But no, this person's biological family essentially abandoned him/her when s/he needed them most.

You see, s/he was diagnosed with cancer. Yes, cancer.

Not something easily treatable like some skin cancers, but something that settled deep into his/her body. Something that would make life very difficult for him/her while s/he worked hard at getting better.

Money was and remains an issue. S/He applied for disability and was turned down before finally prevailing in a face-to-face hearing after two years. Some idiot in the initial stages of his/her claim decided that cancer wasn't serious enough to qualify for social security disability.

Really? Not serious enough?

Fucktard!

Once the positive outcome came, s/he waited to hear what s/he would be receiving. Shortly thereafter, s/he found out.

The payment is less than a grand a month. Yep, you read that right. Less than a grand.

Contrary to what the conservative dickheads out there will tell you, most folks on disability aren't "making" shit. Believe me, if this person could be out there working, s/he would be in a hot second, but being over sixty years old AND being ill with something like cancer kind of fucks up the chances of employment out there.

My family is taking in this person and his/her children for now, but we're not rolling in money, either. But that's what you do when your family (and s/he is part of my extended family by choice) needs help and has nowhere else to go. We can't pay for medical shit, but we can, at least for the time being, put a roof over their heads and make sure that the oxygen can be plugged in if it needs to be used.

I really want to be able to visit this person's biological family and let them know what a pile of pin-headed little dickheads they are being. Especially to this person's mother, who you would think would give a fuzzy shit about the person she carried within her for nine months and raised to adulthood.

This person has never been in trouble with anyone or anything. No arrests, jail time, convictions. None of that shit. There is no reasonable explanation that could ever justify the shunning s/he is receiving from these people.

This person is my best friend, and I cannot in good conscience let him/her be treated this way. Long ago, this person (and his/her kids) were incorporated into my family-of-choice. If his/her biological family can't be supportive, then they can go and eat shit.