I hadn't spoken to my family in almost 20 years.
I won't go into the details of my estrangement, other than to say, it was not so much that I hated them. I just felt better when they were not around. So, when my 93 year old Nana, Harriet Lipschitz, died in October 2013, I had an opportunity to reconnect with the Lipschitz clan. My wife is the only one I've told the stories to about my family and, to my dismay, she took the initiative to invite the whole lot of them over last Thanksgiving.
"You need closure, Irving," she said.
I had never heard a worse idea but the genie was out of the bottle and I didn't wanna cause a scene on Nana Harriet's upside-down Cake Day. Plus, I should tell you just a tiny bit about my wife Santana. Santana is super smart and sexy. She was Miss Bogota 1985 and has a doctorate in biochemistry, conducting top secret research for the government. She couldn't discuss her work, but even if she could, I severely doubt I'd understand it.
Santana is also very protective of me and my son Iggy; a tiger has nothing on my wife. That is a mixed blessing as arguments generally mean a ruined week or two with no sex, so there's that. My wife is also a bit of a health nut and she succeeded into turning me and Iggy into vegans several years ago. I still smoke the occasional cigarette but a man's gotta be a man.
So..., there I sat last Thanksgiving, surrounded by the entire Lipschitz clan. And even though I am a grown man of 56, just seeing my three brothers, two sisters, mother, father, step-mother and step-father put me in a cold-sweat. It was like flashing back to a bad acid trip. It was as if time condensed. Sure, they all looked 20 years older, but the dynamic remained timeless. I watched them stuff their stupid pie-holes in slow motion; bite after bite of turkey and stuffing and suddenly I was back in the 1960s wishing I could run away or fall off a bridge. Only this time I was in my own house.
My mother was making a disparaging remark about me when a very strange thing happened. Everybody's speech began to slur. My entire family, as if one, began sweating profusely, eyelids drooping. I had never seen anything like it. Then my mother fell over shaking and twitching. Like bowling pins, the entire Lipschitz clan followed suit.
Santana called 911 and the whole clan was taken to the university hospital. For some reason Santana, Iggy and myself were just fine. It was touch and go all week as the doctors struggled to save my family. They explained it was some type of "super botulism" they had never seen before. I didn't really understand what they were talking about but Santana spoke their language.
By Christmas I had gone to 9 more funerals. My entire clan was deep-sixed.
It was at the last funeral, as they lowered my Mother in the ground, that one lone tear sneaked down my face. I can't say if it was a tear of sorrow or relief.
Santana wiped it away with her thumb.
"I told you, you needed closure."
Originally posted on r/nosleep under the pen name mypumassmellfunky.
