OK, here is part 2 of my story, and it sure isn't pretty:
After my brother died and my father divorced my mother and married my step mother, he left my mother in the house alone to rot. He provided for her financially (barely), kept the house up (barely) and brought her in liquor and food when she was no longer stable enough to drive (had accidents, of course).
My sister had 3 children, I had two and I lived out of state. We did what we could for her but I had no love for this woman. I don’t remember her ever holding me as a child or feeling her love, and I had a hard time feeling anything for her but pity. While my brother was still alive and a young teenager, she turned against my sister and I and clung to him in the most disgusting manner. She sided with my second husband when we were divorcing (he didn’t beat you, did he?) and took him in and, I am ashamed to say this but it is true, she ended up sleeping with him. Two nuts living in a house together. She threw him out after he put a knife to her throat and then told me how crazy he was. I had warned her about him but in her Looney and sex starved mind, it didn’t matter what she did to her daughter, she had to have a man around again.
Eventually she focused her attentions on a neighbor across the street from the house. We had been trying to get her help so when she attacked this poor man with a screw driver and was arrested (thank God he wasn’t badly hurt), we were elated that she would finally be brought to the help that she needed. The entire neighborhood showed up in court and begged the judge to force her into psychiatric help. Being a first offender, he was reluctant but he agreed due to the pleas. She was unfortunately sent for psychoanalysis, which does a schizophrenic no good, and was not legally obliged to take medication. So it was to no avail. My sister and I gave up in disgust as we had our own very messy lives to deal with and she quieted down (afraid of being locked up again).
Her final mental deterioration started about the age of 43 and ended when she died at age 67 3 years ago in July. My father by then had moved far out of state and my sister was away on a vacation with her family. I did not have contact information. When a neighbor saw two days of mail in her box and could not reach her on the phone, she called me and my father and we found we could not reach her as well. It turned out she had a stroke and lay on the floor for 2. She was taken to the hospital. As her next of kin, I had to make the decision alone (my sister was away) to set up a DNR as her kidneys started to fail from dehydration. Imagine how this felt, having to decide this on my own.
My sister was due to arrive at my father’s house at the end of her trip and he greeted her with “I have to tell you, your mother’s dead, and by the way, the house is mine” the minute she arrived. He had been paying the mortgage all those years and felt that he could discount the fact that he and my mother were divorced, so half the house belonged to me and my sister as her only heirs. It was the only thing we had from our mother and he was trying to steal it from us. When he arrived at my house in preparation for the funeral, the first thing out of his mouth to me was not, sorry about your mother, but “the house is mine, you know.” Unbelievable and not true, especially because of the few good things my mother did say to me was that when she died, she was happy that half the house would belong to my sister and I.
The funeral was a chance to see our mother as she would have been if she had not gone nuts. They were able to clean her up (she looked like a bag lady) and dress her properly, and we marveled at the sight of our mother as a normal looking woman for the first time in many years.
My father tried to act like he was still her husband, even though my step mother was there at the wake with him (drunk, by the way, they had both turned into lushes over the years). They had been divorced 20 years by this time. My sister and I made sure he realized that we were the next of kin and he had to sit in the back of the room. Another surreal family funeral to get through. Him making snide comments while we were saying our good-byes to her before they closed the coffin. Him trying to force us to give him an original copy of the death certificate so he could forge the deed to the house to be only in his name. We had to hire a lawyer to advise us. His confrontation of us while cleaning out her house (what a disgusting mess) was something I won’t ever forget, because we would not comply with his wishes. And this was the father who was supposed to love me!
You can only imagine what a horrible mess that house was with a crazy person living alone in it for 20+ years. I remember my step mother asking if there were any “antiques” in the house. Nothing in that house belonged to her or my father, he had divorced her and left her to rot. Death sure does bring out the worst in people. Fortunately, he realized he had no chance of forcing us to give in so when the house was sold 3 months later, my sister and I did get a share of the proceeds, though we willingly gave him more than we had to for the sake of his feelings
I had to go into therapy shortly after my mother’s death. Not so much because of her behavior towards me, but because of my father’s betrayal. I was so angry that my husband and sister and brother in law talked me into going to get rid of my anger. I ended up forgiving my mother (she could not possibly have loved me any more than she did, she was not at fault, she was truly ill) and eventually my father, who was truly the one at fault. I could only forgive him because I loved him or it would destroy me. He would not be able to bear what I had to say to him. He was an emotional coward his entire life.
Several months later my therapist kicked me out after thinking I was ok and that he had conquered my bulimia. I was just lying to him about that, I was not ready to give up that nasty habit just yet. Since then I did discover that even thought I have forgiven my father, I have not been able to get rid of the need to tell him just what hell he put all 3 of his kids through by his lack of action at all the important times of our lives. Hence my feelings of voicelessness.
This now leads me to the reason why I have been researching N’s for the past 6 months in the first place, the behavior of my oldest son.
More later. This is so hard to do, hope it makes sense.
