Ns, empathy and death of a close friend

[Ales2]

My NMs closest friend from her early days in the US (NM is a foreign import from Germany) passed away on Saturday after a long battle with lunch cancer. Yes, she smoked. She was roughly mid-70s in age.  I am friends via Facebook with her two daughters and happened to email both of them over the weekend requesting an address for xmas cards and I found out about it rather quickly.

Anyway, one of the daughters asked me to call my Mom and tell her, so I did. Here is the Ns are BatShit Crazy part (thanks Bones!):

NM did not say one word, nor did her tone on the phone change when she heard the news. No emotion, no empathy, so sense of loss I could hear.

Instead she interrogated me about how often I talk with this daughter and asked via what methods I communicate (phone, cell, im Fb or email) none of which my NM has.

Very strange and bizarre. This friend named her oldest daughter after my Mother and she spent some time with her sick friend visiting last summer, but still she seemed very cold about it. 

[JustKathy]

I've seen this same reaction with both my NM and Co-F. When there have been deaths in the family, Co-F was usually the one to call, and he was always completely devoid of empathy. I usually responded to the news with complete devastation, while he responded with something very flippant. Without fail, both he and NM would dismiss it as being the person's own fault ... that they somehow deserved it. I'd typically hear something along the lines of, "Oh well, he drank too much, so he had it coming." Very very cold.

[BonesMS]

(((((((((((((((((((((Ales2)))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))  You're welcome.  I think the term BAT-SHIT CRAZY is the only way to describe the N's that we know.



I've seen this N Bat-Shit Crazy behavior time and time again whenever there's been a death involved.

When I was a kid, and another child-friend of mine died, (about the age of between 10 to 12), I was devastated.  The N-B*tch's attitude about this child's death was essentially:  "EFF him, ME FIRST!"  She punished me for crying about the death of my childhood friend even though I was still only a kid myself!  I was NOT permitted to take the focus off of the QUEEN @#$% of the UNIVERSE!

Years later, before I finally understood what N-Doofus was about, I was at her home for a dinner invite.  Upon my arrival at her place, it quickly became apparent that her husband was not home.  He had gone over to his parents' place because his father's illness took a turn for the worse.  I stated that I should go home so that she could go be with her husband during this stressful time.  She nonchalantly dismissed that idea and continued to behave as if it was no big deal to HER.  Within the hour, the phone rang.  It was N-Doofus' husband informing her that his father had just died.  There was ABSOLUTELY NO EMPATHY coming from her!    When she hung up the phone, I again offered to go home so that she could go be with her husband to console him in his grief about his Dad.  She blew me off and ANNOUNCED her "little plans" that SHE wanted to watch some movies on DVD and expected ME to set it up for her!    I told her that I NEVER touch other people's electronics without looking at the user/owner's manual first!  She assumed that all electronics were identical!    Again, I emphasized that I NEVER touch other people's electronics WITHOUT LOOKING at the owner's manual FIRST!  I asked her where they keep their owner's manuals and all I got was the "glassy-eyed blank stare"....no answer.  So I started searching the area around the electronics in the hope that her husband kept the manuals near or beside the electronics.

While I'm searching, N-Doofus CALLED HER HUSBAND while he was still dealing with the immediate aftermath of his father's death.  (The Dad had died at home.)  THAT, in itself, shocked me!    The next words out of her mouth had my jaw on the floor!  N-Doofus DEMANDED that he IMMEDIATELY DROP what he's doing and tell me how to set up the electronics because SHE WANTED TO WATCH A MOVIE!    I could hear him yelling at her from across the room and she just blew him off.  Her whole attitude was:  "EFF YOUR DEAD FATHER....ME FIRST!"  (BAT-SHIT CRAZY!)

A few years after that, (I still didn't know or understand about NPD), I'm at the bedside of the NB*TCH as she lay in a coma, dying.  I realized that in the rush to get to the hospital, I left my medications behind, which I needed to take.  I called N-Doofus, thinking she was my friend, and asked her if she could go to my home and bring my prescriptions to me.  She came to the hospital, got my house keys, went to my place, got my medications, then gave them to me.  Instead of expressing empathy about the fact that the NB*TCH was comatose and clearly dying, N-DOOFUS starts up her song and dance of:  "LOOK AT ME!  LOOK AT ME!!! PAY ATTENTION TO ME!  DON'T YOU THINK I'M FUNNY!!  I WANT YOU TO DO FOR ME-E-E-E!!!!!  MY LITTLE PLANS!!!"  I asked her to stop.  She acted as if I said:  "Keep trucking!"  The nurse finally had to FORCE HER TO LEAVE because she was disruptive to everyone in the Intensive Care Unit at the hospital!  (BAT-SHIT CRAZY!)  No empathy!  NOTHING but DEMANDS that EVERYONE FOCUS ON HER!  

It took me a long time to finally get it that I was dealing with an NPD.  Once I got it......I got it!

Sheesh!!!!  All these N's need to be locked up in a rubber room, somewhere, AWAY from us!   

Bones

[JustKathy]

Ugh, Bones, that's horrible. I experienced something similar when my Grandmother died. In fact, I just got a new computer and was going through old emails, and found some of the email exchanges between my NM and family members back home while my Grandmother was on her death bed. The family in Canada was trying to keep NM updated on Grandma's condition, and NM kept changing the sujbject to talk about HER, or her favorite sport, hockey. The Winter Olympics were going on at the time, and she just kept deflecting away from her dying mother to talk about hockey. At one point, she changed the subject header of the email from "Mom," to "Hockey."

Here's part of an exchange between NM and her niece (my cousin) who was tending to my Grandmother's bedside (she passed at home per her own request).

Neice writes :
Subject: MOM
"Please let everyone know that we see progress. I will
let you more as the days go on."

NM responds:
Subject changed to: CONGRATULATIONS CANADA OLYMPIC GOLD MEADAL WINNERS
"> THIS WAS A HARD ONE FOR ME - BORN IN CANADA BUT USA
> IS MY HOME - MY FAVOURITE
> PLAYERS LIKE PAUL KARIYA PLAYED FOR CANADA AND WHO
> COULD NOT WISH  WAYNE
> GRETZKY TO BE WITH THE WINNING TEAM.  HOPE MOTHER
> WAS ABLE TO ENJOY THE
> MOMENT."

Neice responds:
Subject changed to: NO SUBJECT
"Grandma wouldn't watch hockey if it was the last thing
on TV.
Anyway, thought you would want to know that
Grandma is doing so much better today and is
eating baby food. As they say, you have to take baby
steps."

Un-freaking-believeable. My mother knew that my Grandmother hated hockey, so she was essentially rubbing salt in the wound with that one.

[BonesMS]

Ugh, Bones, that's horrible. I experienced something similar when my Grandmother died. In fact, I just got a new computer and was going through old emails, and found some of the email exchanges between my NM and family members back home while my Grandmother was on her death bed. The family in Canada was trying to keep NM updated on Grandma's condition, and NM kept changing the sujbject to talk about HER, or her favorite sport, hockey. The Winter Olympics were going on at the time, and she just kept deflecting away from her dying mother to talk about hockey. At one point, she changed the subject header of the email from "Mom," to "Hockey."

Here's part of an exchange between NM and her niece (my cousin) who was tending to my Grandmother's bedside (she passed at home per her own request).

Neice writes :
Subject: MOM
"Please let everyone know that we see progress. I will
let you more as the days go on."

NM responds:
Subject changed to: CONGRATULATIONS CANADA OLYMPIC GOLD MEADAL WINNERS
"> THIS WAS A HARD ONE FOR ME - BORN IN CANADA BUT USA
> IS MY HOME - MY FAVOURITE
> PLAYERS LIKE PAUL KARIYA PLAYED FOR CANADA AND WHO
> COULD NOT WISH  WAYNE
> GRETZKY TO BE WITH THE WINNING TEAM.  HOPE MOTHER
> WAS ABLE TO ENJOY THE
> MOMENT."

Neice responds:
Subject changed to: NO SUBJECT
"Grandma wouldn't watch hockey if it was the last thing
on TV.
Anyway, thought you would want to know that
Grandma is doing so much better today and is
eating baby food. As they say, you have to take baby
steps."

Un-freaking-believeable. My mother knew that my Grandmother hated hockey, so she was essentially rubbing salt in the wound with that one.

OMG!  What a B*TCH!!!!!

Bones

[JustKathy]

LOL Bones. Yep, but at the same time, not at all surprising for an N.

[BonesMS]

LOL Bones. Yep, but at the same time, not at all surprising for an N.

True!

[Hopalong]

I was so stunned, 40 years ago, when I heard about the death of a friend (a peer,
someone I truly liked--who was the young wife of my mother's friend's son, and
had two young children). She was a sweet person. She had drowned.

It was the first time I'd experienced the death of a friend. I sat at the breakfast
table feeling shock. Mom said, "Oh well, it's probably for the best. She had a
drug problem, you know."

 

In hindsight...I know she couldnl't feel empathy and she actually wasn't trying
to be cruel. She was probably trying to tell me something that would make
me "feel better."

But...

 

Hops

[JustKathy]

Mom said, "Oh well, it's probably for the best. She had a drug problem, you know."

Yes! That's what I hear every time. I hear it from Co-Father as well. Not only a lack of empathy, but dismissing it as no big deal because the person somehow "had it coming."

[Hopalong]

I never would have anticipated this at the time, because it took me decades to get
unreactive to my mother's Nism and lack of empathy. Full compassion only took
hold in her very last years, and in a way I am lucky she lived to 98, so I could get there.
(In another way, whew. My decade with her was the longest of my life.)

But, maybe because I'm getting long in the tooth, or just had so many years to
work on it...I actually got to a place where I really mean it that I am not angry
with her (her memory) for being who she was. I truly believe that some of her
Nism was hardwired, and the rest likely solidifed by trauma (her father).

I yearned for an explanation at the time, and was damaged and confused by her
deficits. And it was decades of pain (and therapy and ... church, I guess) before I could
grasp that when I judged her, or stayed angry, or experienced...OUTRAGE, I guess is
the best word...it did nothing. None of my reactions or feelings or needs changed
anything about it, because I actually don't think it was changeable.

Any more than weather. And...in other moments and ways, I saw her as in her
own reflexes, trying to love. I think she did try. I think she literally couldn't be
different. So she expressed love in being dutiful and busily involved. She took good
physical care of me, and was hugely dedicated to child education for which I'll
always be grateful.

All this was easy for me to get to (well, not easy) because she was never overtly
abusive. Neither verbally nor physically. And that made a heck of a difference.
Her damaging behavior was more unchecked N-supply addiction and a whole lotta
manipulation. But I don't even think she knew the meaning of "manipulative" nor
ever pondered it. It was a reflexive as all the rest of the signs of her nature.

I think what she may have also meant by that remark was partly a punitive thing
(she was raised with ideas of hellfire and brimstone, and to her generation, "drugs"
were frightening and shockingly "evil") -- but also perhaps she thought (not knowing
anything about addiction or treatment at all), that it was in a way a "mercy."

It is really, really hard to see the N and Co-N people in our lives as ... more than
that.

I hope nobody ever defines me by my worst aspects. But we're human, and
I sure am judgmental myself.

Work in progress,
Hops

[teartracks]

Hops I'm with you.

I hope nobody ever defines me by my worst aspects.

tt

[fraidycat]

It's scary how heartless and self centered N's can be. When my sister in-law died in a car accident ( she was in her early 30's) my n-mom and I went to her parents house to meet with her large family and help make funeral arrangements. N-Mom expected the family to console her and offered no consoling or support. It made me sick, everyone started to notice her lack of empathy and she knew it so she started to imitate me to look normal...one sister pointed it out. Then when the family asked if we wanted to chip in for flowers n-mom sat stone cold and just stared at me. I wanted to so I spoke up and offered. She wouldn't even chip in for the lunch they ordered for her that day, she could easily afford it, I had a young family. Then on the way home she tried to get us lost by screaming at me to head north east on the turnpike. We lived west of them and she knew it. It was my first time on the turnpike, I think she was just trying to screw me up so she could have another dumb Fraidycat story to tell. I didn't fall for it. When it came to accepting empathy from neighbors and friend she was all over it. She even told my grieving N-brother "just wait if you think it's bad now, all the people who care today will forget about you in a few months" and "don't bother with therapy you'll just have to listen to other peoples problems" this was before the funeral. She never would have pulled that crap with the family if they had friends in common she loves to keep up appearances. Bat shit crazy is right, it's all about them and it's sad.

[BonesMS]

It's scary how heartless and self centered N's can be. When my sister in-law died in a car accident ( she was in her early 30's) my n-mom and I went to her parents house to meet with her large family and help make funeral arrangements. N-Mom expected the family to console her and offered no consoling or support. It made me sick, everyone started to notice her lack of empathy and she knew it so she started to imitate me to look normal...one sister pointed it out. Then when the family asked if we wanted to chip in for flowers n-mom sat stone cold and just stared at me. I wanted to so I spoke up and offered. She wouldn't even chip in for the lunch they ordered for her that day, she could easily afford it, I had a young family. Then on the way home she tried to get us lost by screaming at me to head north east on the turnpike. We lived west of them and she knew it. It was my first time on the turnpike, I think she was just trying to screw me up so she could have another dumb Fraidycat story to tell. I didn't fall for it. When it came to accepting empathy from neighbors and friend she was all over it. She even told my grieving N-brother "just wait if you think it's bad now, all the people who care today will forget about you in a few months" and "don't bother with therapy you'll just have to listen to other peoples problems" this was before the funeral. She never would have pulled that crap with the family if they had friends in common she loves to keep up appearances. Bat shit crazy is right, it's all about them and it's sad.

((((((((((((Fraidycat))))))))))))))))))))))))

It is sad.  I wish we could ship all of them off to a rubber room, somewhere, lock it up, and throw away the key!

Bones