It’s tough in face to face communications for a lot of people especially with difficult subjects. I find that the tougher the subject, the harder it is to talk about. My pop told me once that ‘the tougher the truth to tell, the truer the friend that tells it’. I still hold this to be true but it doesn’t make face to face communications easier.

1. I have a backspace key online… in person I just stammer
2. I tend to drone on and on, and it’s easier for the recipient to stop reading, go get a glass of water and come back than it is for a person in front of me to signal that it’s time for me to shut up.
3. Nobody interrupts you when you’re blogging!

I look forward to reading more of your replies as well.
1 thing that I learned when making this limoncello is that this all needs to set in a quart sized mason jar and not a pint sized jar. Originally I had intended to divide it all up and let them ferment seperately but after getting to the point where that needed to be done…how was I do evenly divide the zest/fruit peels?

I’ll just mix it all together once it’s fermented and done. It should be easy to divide at that point.

Best

What I have come to realize, many years later, is that everyone deals with their grief in different ways. Some go into a deep denial, some turn entirely juvenile, some go on as if nothing happened, some throw themselves into projects, and some travel inward for awhile. Everyone is different in this, and so while we may expect them to act a certain way or to be themselves just sadder, or to occasionally breakdown, the plain truth of it is that people just aren’t always going to be predictable or typical of themselves in these situations.

I think in these situations, taking the high road would be the best thing to do. Instead of focusing on the failings of others to behave in the way you think they should, focus on the fact that they lost a loved one, in this case, their mother. (Being lucky enough to have my mother with me still, I have zero appreciation for what that must be like.)

I think it’s commendable that you and your sister and brother-in-law pitched in to help out with the memorial. You weren’t focusing on amusing yourselves or getting drunk, but you also weren’t grieving the same loss. You were focusing on a personal tribute to CP, something that perhaps Jeffrey just couldn’t bring himself to focus on. There’s a difference between mother and step-mother, and I would suspect that her passing affects your life in a much less drastic way than it does for Joey and Jeffrey and CP’s grandson who, misbehaved or not, belonged there as much as anyone else.

I say all of this based only on what you’ve written here, and I have heard no other accounts of what transpired, but your words seem excessively harsh and judgmental considering the guy’s mother just died.