Families - why so hard

Families, why are they so hard. You would think a family would want to try to mend rifts and maintain a healthy dynamic. Yet I'm not sure anymore what a healthy dynamic is. I know in-laws come with thier own baggage of expectations and desires, but intimite families who've grown up together, suffered, loved, laughed, hurt, and cried together should understand you better than anyone.
Life is so short, and can end in a moments notice, or no notice, how bad an argument can you have had twenty years ago to not realize when death calls its too damn late to fix things. I know I'll never get what I needed, nor say what I should have to my biological dad, nor will my stepfather ever see me as anything other than that problem causing teen ager, even though I'm going on my mid40's.
Yeah it took me until my thirties to get my act together, and I hurt a lot of people in that time, but with time and effort leopards can change thier spots. Do they stay changed or is it temporary? I can't honestly say, all I do know is I struggle to do things right, make the right moral choices even if it means a harder road, could I take advantage and use people and get wealthy yea I'm sure I can, could I look at myself in the mirror afterwords, I doubt it. I've had money and know happiness isn't found in wealth, just the addiction for more. Do I wish I had more than I do, hell yes, but at what point do I get when I fail to know the man in the mirror? Agian as long as I know I'm on the hard road hopefully I'm on the right one.
So how do I fix what's been broken in my family? Is it possible? You can build the bridge but you can't make a person cross.
I waited my whole life waiting for my biological father to get it, hoping if nothing else on his death bed looking back he'd see what he missed out on, a son! Disappointed agian, in the end he passed raving about how I was stealing his money, and robbing him blind, as he gave his debit card to a "family friend" who went on monthly yahoo trips, using every cent he had. When he passed I had to borrow money from my mother, who pretty much loathed him because the thought of him in a paupers grave devastated my soul, it's yet another thing I'll love my mom forever for, she didn't do that for him, she did it for me, so something good came out of the pain.
Back to the immediate family, and slightly extended, why hang on to these issues from so long ago, I know I was mad for so long I forgot what I was mad about, for so long the armor and sword protecting me from pain, had been hurting me, alienating me from those that mattered. Will we fix things before its to late? Is it to late already? All I know is we're alive, and with life comes hope, either we fix things and become a family agian, or the diaspora continues, and when my beloved nana, the matriarch is finely called home, our family will be what it was before her, nothing and nobody, I can only believe in hope, and with age and experience, I'm the second eldest, they will see in the end family is all you have.