Namechanged for this.
Auntie Red Sari just told me that for the past THIRTY years - she and an old boyfriend from her teenage years have had a long term affair. He died last week at the age of 88. She is 86.
Auntie Red Sari has been married to Uncle Bald Patch for forty years. They have a mix of kids from previous marriages who are all similar ages to me. Aunty Red has now told me that Uncle Bald Patch has been a secret alcoholic for much of that time. That he would drink himself in to a stupor most nights and that she stayed with him because he had mental health issues from being sexually abused as a child and because she didn't want to break up the family home again for the kids (they would have been about ten when his drinking started) Uncle Bald Patch is a very grumpy and secretive man. Aunty Red still wears a flower in her hair and her coral lipstick and keeps her little tin of blusher in her handbag. And always has her lovely saris. She's Indian.
Her special friend who was someone we all knew - let's call him "Bertie" was a lovely funny man who would sometimes pop in at Xmas and bring little presents for the kids and chocolate for myself and my siblings (we spent a lot of time at our cousins house at Xmas and New Year) Bert wore a cardigan and a flat cap and had a little swallow tattoo on his neck. He had a wife and two children a couple of years younger than my cousins.
Bert died last week suddenly from a heart attack and Aunty Red was sobbing. I picked her up one evening this week to take her out to a family dinner and she told me that for the last thirty years, she and Bert would meet overnight in a little b&b a few towns over. They would talk and drink some wine and sleep in the same bed but she said they didn't do more than kissing because that (in her words) "would have led to us having to make decisions that would hurt the children." She had been a single mum when she met Uncle Bald Patch, she was a domestic abuse survivor and she must have felt like she had no choices. It's also very different for Indian women in her community - there are all sorts of ideas and values that she had that she couldn't break from. Such as standing by her second husband even as he became more withdrawn and silent as she said. She told me that he never comes to bed. He sleeps on the sofa in a drunken wreck. She said that the twice yearly night with Bert was the only time she could have a drink herself and relax and feel like she was a woman and not a house slave to Uncle Bald Patch's children or his controlling drinking.
She's asked me to take her to Bert's funeral. All the lightness in her seems to have disappeared. Turns out Bert was a secret boyfriend she had from her late teens and she wasn't allowed to see him because she had an arranged marriage. Bert went on to marry someone else and then his work led him to accidentally see her several years later once they both had children.
Uncle Bald Patch didn't hit Aunty Red but he was seeing other women at the start of their relationship and later the drinking took over. So she had been unhappy for a long time before Bert was on the scene. I don't know the situation with Bert's wife but they separated about five years ago. I feel so very sorry for everyone involved and how unhappy everyone must have been for so long trying to keep things good for the kids. My cousins have NO idea what's happened.
So here we are. I look around me at the various states of relationships that me and my siblings and my cousins are all in and see that nothing changes really - people do their best and they muddle along and they live their lives. Aunty Red has lost her way a bit this week. But she loves her children and grandchildren and so she's got people around her.
Complicated isn't it, life? She says next year she will go to the b&b on her own and have a glass of wine.