Family Oversharing (Not Mine, Thankfully)

OK, so I was looking for Maria McKee on Facebook (apparently you can declare yourself as a fan of people and things like -- plug alert -- Amazon Video On Demand), and found a couple groups, and a link to this story: "Bryan Maclean: Love before, after and beyond." It was on the well-known publication Canadian Christianity Today, and had a fair amount of stuff about Maria (Brian's half-sister). Maclean, who died a few years ago, was known for writing great songs and being a part of the acclaimed '60s band Love with Arthur Lee. McKee was lead singer of beloved "cowpunk" band Lone Justice and a solo artist. I'm a fan, as her music is the kind of poppy and grandiose stuff I love.

The article is long, a bit rambling, and very much one-source. And while I was interested to learn that Maria is bi-polar and spent three months in bed staring at the TV and then the wall before her wonderful husband got her help, I felt like a voyeur -- much more voyeuristic than when I peek at the supermarket tabs. This was too real to enjoy as "Hollywood crap." For example:

Elizabeth admits it’s only in the last decade that she has started to come to terms with some of her more questionable parenting decisions. As an example, she brings up Bryan’s childhood weight issues; “I think a lot of kids eat because they’re starved for that thing that they need; their parents. And I was so scared of [second husband] Jack, that I had to stand with him against Bryan. It was the worst thing. That was the sadness of my life, to have to gang up on him.”

It was the opposite scenario with Maria. “I was in such La La Land. I thought; ‘Oh, the Lord gave me my little girl! I always wanted a little girl; I’m going to be the perfect mother of a perfect child.’ And then I just loved her. I took her everywhere, because Jack was never home, and she had no daddy, so I tried to be everything to her, and do everything. And a lot of it was good, but a lot of it was bad, because I was in another world. She was my life – I made her my life.”

“I think it’s been in the last few years, since Bryan died, that I’ve been able to be honest with myself, and who knows, maybe that whole attitude that I had towards her, of making her my little Princess and all that, is what screwed her up.”

Wow. Wonder what my mom would have said about me if CanadianChristianity.com
called her.