Aunt B.

My second trip in the last two weeks (I may post about the other later) was to go and see my husband's Grandparents, Aunts, Uncles and Cousins.  I was really excited for the trip because Mr. Sprat's grandparents are the kind of grandparents everyone wants to have.  Grandma spoils us rotten with Ham Loaf dinners and trips to the Chinese buffet and all she is concerned about is if we've had enough to eat.  I was really excited to go because I was expecting lots of good food and no "gosh are you sure you should be eating that" crap.

Mostly, the trip was just as I had hoped.  Lots of being spoiled and no guilt.  They don't even do it to themselves, which is nice.  I hate hearing about how someone else shouldn't eat the thing they just ate that you just ate too. But at one point during dinner, Grandma and Grandpap started talking about Aunt B.

Aunt B.  died several years ago (before I'd even met my husband) from breast cancer and was loved by everyone in Mr. Sprat's entire family.  One year when she'd had chemo so her hair was really short, she dressed up as Drew Carey for Halloween.  That takes some balls. She also used to volunteer as a patient escort at Planned Parenthood, to help get people inside past the protesters.  From everything I've heard, it sounds like I would have loved her and that we would have had a lot in common.  She always seemed to me like the kind of person who didn't care what anyone thought and just did what she wanted to do.

Sadly, the story was about how she dieted one time and got down to 140 pounds and looked "amazing."  Grandma couldn't stop talking about how good she looked or how different she looked.  At one point she even said that she couldn't even tell it was her, she couldn't see B. in there at all.

I was horrified.  Why would they be impressed that she didn't look like herself at at all?  Who wants to not be his or herself?  Also, according to my husband, when she was dying she wasted away and looked terrible. It's in very poor taste to comment on how good she looked thin, considering it would later be a sign that she was dying.  I was shocked both that B. would have dieted in the first place and also that Grandma and Grandpap would be so impressed by it, all over a hamloaf dinner while looking across the table at their fat granddaughter -in-law.

It hurt a lot.  I wanted to yell and scream.  I wanted to say "no, not you guys, you don't care about weight."  I wanted to keep my image of Aunt B. as being someone like me. I thought I had found a corner of the world where diet culture hadn't totally permeated.   It feels like sometimes there are no safe places.

~Mrs. Sprat