At this point I am simply mentally, emotionally, and physically exhausted. I know this will get better. However, several children went into meltdown mode when M started deteriorating. Then, S feel apart from his own issues. In addition to comforting children, monitoring M, shuttling children to appointments, II and I have been managing a major crisis with S which ended with him needing to go inpatient.
So, in the middle of all of this, II's mother contacted me. I had briefly contacted her a few months ago, with the concern that she had a right to know her grandson was dying. She immediately swore she was coming to meet him and was going to rebuild relationship with her other grandchildren.
Yeah. We weren't convinced. Thankfully, we did not tell the children anything about her intentions. Of course, she never followed through. In our entire marriage, the only time she has ever followed through is when we have assisted her on that effort. She even stiffed the state park for her cabin she stayed in the week we were married and my parents had to foot the bill for her. I didn't honestly expect less from her.
Even so, from this same place of feeling like perhaps she should have knowledge of her grandparents, I contacted her last week to inform her that M has even less time than he had before, and that we weren't certain he was going to make it through the weekend but were fairly sure he won't make it through the fall. I also notified her that she has another grandson.
Today, I got a response from her. It is the typical passive aggressive, poor-me excuses I have heard my entire marriage from that woman. The only things she has ever done with passion when it concerns our family was her vicious attack against me when I suffered a miscarriage on E's first birthday, and her disgusting disowning of II when I caught him.
This redition of the poor me routine includes stories that her teen daughter got ugly on her dying husband while she was on a mother-daughter retreat with her youngest child and whines that her six year old is bipolar and rages constantly so she cannot find a babysitter for him.
Well, let's see. The teen daughter is a hell-cat because she has been raised to be such. This woman recieved that child as a foster-child at six months of age. She spent her entire childhood putting NO boundaries, no healthy parenting, no consequences for poor behaviors and nothing but spoiling her senseless. This is the same parenting she did to II's thirty year old brother whose greated accomplishment in his life currently is that he was NOT charged for being under the influence of his drug addiction when he was fired from his job as a part-time cop. Instead, he spends the rest of his life on military disability. He injured his right hand and was an army mechanic. That would be honorable IF he hadn't injured it breaking the rules and getting on a motorcycle two days after coming back from Iraq. The regulations stated that he had to do a safety course before he was allowed to go back on a motorcycle because of the rates of soldiers who wrecked doing.....exactly what he did. He then committed fraud and said he injured his hand on a dirtbike so he could get the disability.
I don't think I'm going to be compassionate for this teen girl's behaviors. More than once I asked this woman to please actually parent this child, especially at the times she was trying to destroy my house and attack my children. This girl is now fifteen. I'm quite certain she is a holy terror. It's not like she didn't give them plenty of warning this day would come.
As to her dying husband, yes, he is in fact dying. He was dying when she married him seven years ago. In fact, she was hoping he would die faster, since she felt being a widow was more honorabale than thrice divorcee. He has battled cancer for three years now when he was told he would live nine months. So, I hate to sound callous, but yes, he's going to die. She's known that as long as she's known him.
She made no mention of her son who is truly messed up with severe PTSD and attachment disorder. I have to wonder if she disrupted his adoption. Two years ago, he was smearing feces on the school bathroom stalls and getting suspended. He was also making death threats to her. If she didn't use his situation for sympathy, then I honestly have to wonder if she sent him away at this point. He had to be good for some sympathy. That child was truly scary. It wasn't his fault. I begged and begged and begged her to get him proper help for years. She refused, flat out refused. He is truly scary, but he deserved to at least have therapy to have a chance at healing. That doesn't happen in her home. She will happily give meds to sedate a child and liberally. She won't give children genuinely help for their issues.
She did mention the daughter L's age. Thus far, I would guess that girl is being raised the same way the older girl has been raised. She's likely spoiled with no boundaries or consquences right now. I expect when she becomes a teen, she will be just as difficult as every other teen this woman has raised.
As for her supposed Bipolar six year old, I don't believe her. Simply put, she states that no one believes it but her, which means this drug baby is not diagnosed. I begged her years ago to not adopt this child if she wasn't committed to a LIFETIME of therapy and resources for his challenges. He was cute as a baby, so she adopted him. She didn't care he would have issues. Why am I surprised he's having problems at six. Oh wait, I'm not.
What I really want to say to this woman is that if we are going to play the 'how bad is my life' game, I STILL win. Yet, I am not interested in focusing on what sucks on my life. I'm the mother of a large special needs family. I could tally the struggles and issues and most people would drop their jaws at what I live with on a daily basis. II's mother, like my own mother sadly, is far more interested in making her own life sound so much worse to try to justify why it's okay that she behaves worse than I do in all of our interactions.
I'm not going to say it though. I honestly don't care. I defened this woman and insisted that she loved II to the best of her ability to do so, until that email when she disowned him. I stand behind every word I wrote to her 2.5 years ago. I was being decent by notifying her about her grandchildren. What she chooses to do with that information is hers to make. It's not my problem. I don't really expect her to be a decent person and come be an actual grandmother to these kids. I just decided that I would no longer stop her from being their grandmother if she wanted to. The only thing that stops her from building a relationship with her grandchildren now is herself.
I think her record speaks for itself. She hasn't seen five of her grandchildren in nearly six years, long before we were in conflict with her. She has four grand-children she has never even met. One of those four is about to die, and she doesn't have enough decency to meet him before he dies. Undoubtably, she'll use his misfortune to milk more sympathy for her awful life from those she interacts with though. She seems to be good at that. She's just awful at being an actual mother or grandmother.
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