My mother, in widowhood, had a stroke in 2014 and did well to bounce back but now every illness takes a bigger bite out of her than before. She has had a really bad one this last 10 days requiring all four of us to rally round and here I am now sitting in her typically roasting house, having cooked three meals for her and her fridge, awaiting handover to sibling who is training down from the north to relieve the shift. Dunno whether this is the biggie or just an incident but we have had two hospital emergencies and now she is in the sleepy incoherent interim phase between rallying and declining. Let us see.
An amusing aside in a grim weekend: in a lucid phase, she answered a couple of questions I had about stuff in her kitchen. Cannot make out the logic of where anything goes. Under the decanter of sherry, which sits in a silver coaster, I saw glinting through the glass there is a message to herself with a number to ring to someone in the Philippines. I said what is this. She said it’s to provide spare altar frontals to a charity in the Phillippines that require CofE church kit - some mission or other. She, being a church warden of yore, is happily giving away spare stuff and this is the number to ring. I said ‘ why is it under the decanter?’ And she said it’s to remind her so she put it in a place she’s be bound to see (every time she lifts the decanter, throughout the day). I see.
Mutters there is always humour in dealings with the elderly.
we are facing a milestone also, Mum aged 80 finally downsizing from a house stuffed with treasures. My sole sibling, an avaricious sister, has been feasting on the carcass!
I feel for you about the note about the Philippines. A gazillion and one important things you have tried to drum into her to remember and the only important item is something like this. FFS.
Your second para, Minkie, is identical to my experience of 18 months ago. The shark feeding frenzy between 4 children and - perhaps worse - the horrifying level of giveaway of important things to temporary and opportunistic do-gooders who vanished once paid out. Yuk.
sis is in charge of the whole move ( she engineered it in first place, solely cos fed up of the journey up north to visit).
i am not surprised by her behaviour, long been expecting it. But as a daughter to mum i am pissed off at playing second fiddle to my sister’s feckless children, they can fvcking wait in line.
I bought my dad a Hardy fly rod and reel for his retirement present in 1992. Think Bentley or Cristal of trout fishing kit. It was a shockingly expensive thing proportionately speaking as my salary was £15k P.A. and it was about a month’s net income. When he died I discovered my mum had given it to my errant nephew. He then dbayed it for gap year funds. Where do you even start.
you don’t. You ignore and pretend it never existed. It’s just money and things.
my sis’ latest asset stripping: a bronze sculture poss worth in SEVEN figures if bought from auction house. A villa abroad. She thinks big does my sister.
i also hate how my other lets her bully her, she has done it all her life. Only thing i can do is write to mother’s lawyer so at least it becomes documented.
Cannot tell if the sis on way down is doing so to care for her mother or has suddenly realised she needs some face time at the big denouement in case her absence damages her family’s prospects after many years of working hard to stay in a tactical position on it all
the one item from mums house i showed an interest in she said i could have, then decided, actually shed take it with her after all.
great.
and then, just to help her out really, i said i’d take some of the biographies from the massive, massive book collection. Seems even they are now destined for elsewhere! I think i have been rubbed out of the family.
I had this. I was away, overseas. Mum put a message out to everyone to go to her house (pre move) and put stickers on things we wanted. I turned up weeks later to find everything in the house covered in stickers as others had got in there. I refused to engage in that. I felt very strongly about not boiling it all down to horrible childish selfishness. Turns out I’m wrong and they are right.
Some weeks later I said ‘ok, I’d like a couple of things - this thing and that thing’ and was told they had already gone.
i got a broken chair - kid you not. A nice antique chair with an arm hanging off and a leg in difficulties. I restored it and don’t like it any more.
mutters it is quite comforting to hear i am not alone. Makes my sister and mother less monstrous somehow.
but i still feel v sorry for you. ( when i queried the valuable sculpture with mum she said i could have some garden water feature sculpture instead, its q pretty but is also broken!)
She had two ornate lead garden urns. Someone tried to nick them once but I had attached them to the ground with big bolts and cement. Anyway, she was leaving and I said I’d have those for the garden. We emptied them and tried to cut off the bolts with a hacksaw. I said I would come back the next day with an angle grinder. In between those two events my sister’s husband- so not even one of us - drove up, ripped them off their bases and took them away to Scotland.
fook me.
This is the same guy who, when my dad died, called me and said ‘if you’ve got all your father’s ties can you bring them over as I gave him a Hermes one last Christmas and would like it back please’
i took all the ties and shoved all of them through the letter box and refused to go in. He then wrote to me and said the Hermes one isn’t there, can I have it please.
This sounds so much like my father's family. He is the eldest of 6 children, worked his butt off on the family farm and ended up with zilch after his parents died. This in itself was bearable, if unfair, because his grandfather didn't like him and could deal with his estate as he pleased. What is unbearable is having to listen to one of my uncles claiming that he too had nothing when he and his capricious wife had plundered everything of any value. Makes me feel sick.
A rather depressing thread. Me and my brother, the likely heirs, don't even talk about it. I suspect he thinks like me and doesn't really want anything.
All relationships are different, of course so advice can’t really be offered.
Having lost both parents when I was relatively young, especially with my mum, I torment myself about how selfish I was with my time.
I should have made more time for them, instead I disappeared from their lives to fanny around the world... ...I made it back to see my mum die, but my dad died in a home and I wasn’t with him.
If I close my eyes I can still see them in the coffin, faces distorted by the departure of the soul and the ham fisted efforts of the undertaker... ...no last chance for explanations, which is perhaps a good thing - I’d probably balls that up as well.
We have let this become a materiality whinge which it wasn’t intended to be when I started out. Was focusing on the funny moment in a no fun weekend.
Worst aspect of this is my children are back home from boarding school and I didn’t see them much. They have returned to school worrying about granny. I would have liked to be there to reassure.
My sister has already ceremoniously taken ownership of the silver toast rack. But she is the eldest so it was always going to be her. Still felt a pang of envy -a tiny one- tho, when she shoved it down her top at the breakfast table two Christmases ago.
Our mother is, either temporarily or not, in a nursing home, by the sea, near her own house. We her children are each arriving in turn into her house, using it as a base while we visit.
We are sane, and no one is asset stripping, and I know that we're lucky and that more often I happens like you are describing.
We find decanter/Philipino church kit type notes-to-self each time we tidy one layer deeper. It freaked me out and made me sad but now I have reached a stage of thinking ' this shit happens to everyone in the end, get used to it' .
My sole remaining parent is 83 and has a touch of the cancers. Having lived abroad for 25ish years, my brother has moved into her spare room, partly as she pays for everything and partly so he can wait for the funeral (his admission). They’re filthy to each other, it’s real distressing- she has learned the C word and calls him one regularly, sometimes in front of doctors. The last appointment he took her to - about time it was his turn since he didn’t even visit her on the last admission which was 3 miles up the road yet 30 from me and I was the one dealing with it. The doc apparently commented on what an unusual family dynamic it is. Proving hard to be nice / have great sympathy for her given the nasty aggression she doles out (apparently not dementia), and past history.
You are all caring about the spoils... either by bitching about how someone else has got more or by getting more...Have a word with yourself. I was orphaned at 8 and so never had these issues... I feel lucky!
Actually DW the thread was about comic weirdness as I sat nursing an ill mother. It then diverted but at least for me and Minkie there was some comfort in knowing this horrible behaviour was more common than we thought. As with all threads, if this ain’t your scene then you can just leave it and read something else.
In my family we mostly deal with these issues by being poor...
Did have some fun and games when my grandparents passed though. One of my dad’s sisters, who lived in the house next door, insisted that the grandparents had always said that she would get their driveway when grandparents passed.
Dad and the other sister couldn’t be bothered to fight it - so lawyers fees to carve out the driveway and complete cratering of the value of the house (a 3 bed semi in Farnborough) and hence everyone else’s inheritance.
A very pertinent thread. I too have aged and chronically, lapsing from time to time into acutely, ill mum. One sister is currently living with her doing the care, dishing out the astonishing array of drugs, and bullying her to eat and exercise. I am doing a weekend shift later this week to give her some respite, on the other side of the country which means a tedious drive at risk of speed cameras.
It has been interesting how, over the last couple of years, my mum has wanted to declutter and give things away. I think it is preparation for an orderly exit. All the baking stuff, to sister 1. Dad’s outdoor clothes, me. Contents of the drink cupboard (noxious 1970s and 80s liquers and spirits), mostly me. A teapot from the extensive collection, my wife. And on it goes. When she was last very ill in hospital we had another discussion (there have been many) about where things should go, jewellery and such like, which grandchild, generally. I suggested she mght like to give some of these things while she was still with us (and which she never wears), make a personal gift, get some pleasure from giving, but no, there has to be a vague expression of wishes for me to interpret later...
The one thing she is very clear about is that sister 3 is to be let nowhere near her stuff, she will be picking it over within hours and have most if it in the skip. This is a real concern and one which we as executors will need to counter by changing the locks.
Sad too to grow up in a family where you know, even as a young child, that your lovely father is being treated badly and where favouritism runs riot. The repercussions are still swirling around.
I've always felt sorry for myself as an only child, knowing that when the time comes I will have to deal with this sh1t by myself. This thread is making me feel better. At least I won't have to put my energies into fending off feckless grabby siblings.
Anyway, I'm encouraging my parents to spaff all their cash on having fun. I think they have listened. They have been on so many cruises they are now Platinum Uber cruisers or something. Good on them.
I've been encouraging my mother to do likewise. not cruises, but travel and luxury. When she is worried about driving somewhere, I say get a car to take you, wait and bring you back. She says "that's hundreds of pounds" and gets fearful of the extravagance. War baby. The alternative, though, is the tiring drive, stress of navigation (she will not do SatNav) and having to leave before it gets dark etc. then being exhausted afterwards. I also ask her to travel on planes business or first and to enjoy life a bit. She is very parsimonious. Part of that comes from the past and the rest is the fear of the future. how long will she need her money for etc. It will come to us all.
Nex - how did you feel about being an only child when you were growing up? What other aspects (if any!) of being an only child still irk?
on topic - my folks are late 80s and still almost completely independent, Phil the Greek's incident has revived my concerns about their driving and, inevitably, there's going to come a time when they aren't going to be independent....... my mum is i'm sure showing early signs of dementia but noone wants to admit it.
exactly the same prob with driving and "extravagance" of having someone drive you somewhere - both grew up in war time / immediate post war (real) austerity and (despite having been financially successful) struggle to spend money on themselves.
my mother was upsold a stupidly aggressive car when she had her tired Audi A3 with a dead head gasket towed away and scrapped. The Audi garage then sold an 82 year old woman a 2.5l RS3 which develops 340 horse power and pretty much achieves involuntary donuts when parking. The fook.
I’m with Chambo on this. I have a few relatives who can’t be too far off now, including a 99 year old grandmother. People do fuss about all this shit, but I cannot be bothered with it in the slightest. A small memento of the person would be nice but that’s about it.
I half suspect that’s why my great uncle left me everything when he died as he knew I wasn’t in The least bit interested in ‘stuff’.
Further on the notes-under-the-decanter thing. My mother doesn't have dementia or Alzheimers, but her mental energy keeps reducing. I do hand it to her for finding ways to get things done.
In January, she has been grimly determinedly taking care of renewing her various insurances. She is not able for various reason to use her laptop or the Internet connection at the nursing home so I watched her, for her house insurance -
- writing a cheque
- to her nephew who is her insurance broker
- whose office address she doesn't have to hand, without sending someone to the house for her larger address book
- so , addressing an envelope to the nephew's younger brother, whose address she knows by heart because he currently lives in her late sister's house. She's not confused, she knows the two nephews live in the same town and the one will get the cheque to the other.
If you are thinking 'wouldn't it be better to re-set-up the laptop / go to the house to get the other address book/ do the insurance payment yourself' - we are torn all the time about doing things for her. It seems to break a thread and she gives up areas of responsibility irreversibly unless she keeps doing them on muscle memory. And, as above, ingenuity.
more parental attention - became very at ease in older company
probably more travel than they would have done with more kids
good close relationship with both parents
formed very close friendships (in place of sibling relationships maybe?)
Cons:
dealing with the illness and old age stuff mentioned upthread
boredom/loneliness during childhood
back in the 80s you were an anomaly and viewed as a bit of a curiosity by teachers and peers (less so these days)
those very close friendships mentioned above fade a bit when people start settling down (could be the same for siblings as people start their own families I guess)
Suffice to say, when planning a family Mr Nex (who has a sibling) and I decided we wanted two kids. He liked having a brother and I did find childhood a bit lonely at times. However, Mother Nature had other ideas, so we have an only too.
some "old man" (ie only a couple of years older than her) wrote off her car in the waitrose car park. Cue a panicked visit to Mercedes who, instead of replacing her dull ugly sedan for the same dull ugly sedan sold her the whizzier version with low profile tyres and 18" alloys plus only two doors so the door is so fooking heavy that she can barely close it. The wheels jar her bones painfully at every tiny bump in the road. Visibility out of the back window is so poor that she just ignores it.
Really, she should be using taxis instead and should appreciate that the cost of running this beast plus all the running bodywork repairs from when she clips the edges on bollards, in car parks, on other cars etc etc is actually far more than an account at a cab company would cost her. Her eyesight isn't great and so she doesn't drive in the dark but won't use cabs with strange drivers at night so for half the year she doesn't so much as go to the fookign cinema in the evening because taxi. Even durin gthe daytime, she's reluctant to use cabs because her hearing is terrible so she can't understand what they're saying as they speak forwards and she can't see their mouth move and then she imagines that each time they're taking a short route to avoid traffic that they're kidnapping her and selling her into the white slave trade. (hence why I end up with a 100 mile round trip to take her to the hospital when my brother is in. the. fooking. spare. room. He's not allowed to drive her car because it's too powerful for him - go figure).
Whatever DW might think about the issue, I too am finding some comfort in this thread. (can we add in to the mix youngish kids who need collecting / taking places / 11+ exams and all that shit at the same time?)
ARGH - ROnald Coase - you as well! she will drive (see above), very badly, to the supermarket every day to carry the one small bag of groceries she can manage in one go (see above: brother living in spare room but not contributing a single thing financially or practically) because she refuses to put card details into the supermarket online ordering.
DPW, I do think there is less of a stigma now than there was when I were a lass. However, you will still hear people say "only children are..." in sentences where they would never say "black people are..." or "jewish people are...". Like gingers, we are one of the few minority groups it is still ok to stereotype and mock.
(and 18 year old cats. I know you have your hound issues too. I am in a perpetual state of panic over future cat death, even though they are both fit as fiddles.)
The thing is, it's manifested as "stuff" but generally that's not what hurts. It's not that one sibling got way more than the other. It's the hurt that translates from a parent marginalising one child, intentionally or otherwise. It's the feeling that your position in that person's life is less than you hoped it would be. It's very complicated.
Sure, some people, particularly in extended family, can be greedy twots. But I think if you're close to someone and you're overlooked it compounds the grief that you already feel about losing them in life or in mind.
Yeah, it's often not stuff but the sentiment you attach to stuff.
My gran said she wanted me to have her jewellery. She was not a wealthy woman. It was probably all worthless. But it was her wish and it was bound up with my memories of her. Unfortunately some delightful carer/cleaner/"friend" stole it along with anything else of possible value from her place at some point when she was ill. That makes me said. Not cos I grabbily wanted to get my hands on her shiny stuff, but for sentimental reasons.
Ofc the sentiment is important, which is why I referred to being “rubbed out” of the family. Dont get me started on the favouritism.
my mother has said, dont fall out with your sister when I die. Well, mum, perhaps dont bloody give her everything then, its not helping.
i am not an only child but we had four parents ( two steps) so the burden still very great. Both fathers gone ( a truly dreadful time four or five years ago) and two more left, both now beginning the long flight down into the cellar ( which is whatbthe decline feels like).
re the driving - there is an extremely helpful US website seniordriving.AAA.com about how to drive safely when older/how to persuade parent to pack it in when appropriate.
"My gran said she wanted me to have her jewellery. She was not a wealthy woman. It was probably all worthless. But it was her wish and it was bound up with my memories of her. Unfortunately some delightful carer/cleaner/"friend" stole it along with anything else of possible value from her place at some point when she was ill. "
The corrosive thing for me - in similar circs - is the horrible suspicion hovering over everybody who might be the culprit. parents also paranoid that we (their adult children) are helping ourselves to stuff - laughed off when reminded (for example) that the picture referred to is hanging over the stairs and has been for over a decade....
I was reminded yesterday that some things cannot be sorted with logical analysis. My failing is that I fight fire with fact and it doesn't solve. My older sister and I see eye to eye. My brother and I see eye to eye. My younger sister is a different species of human. It's like we are all Neanderthals happy in our cave and then there is this Sapiens making shit up and living by an entirely opposite moral code.
Yesterday evening my younger one turned up to take over the vigil and I was surprised and disappointed to be reminded that she, aged 55, is still a child. I talk about what we need to do to provide care and a more sustainable lifestyle for our mother and what the other two had to say in agreement with me. She, however, opposes anything that has a downside that involves her getting less support. So, I said maybe we need her to travel around less, reduce her ambitions and anxieties, get her comfortable with her own company on the domestic front, less stretched and frantic. sister immediately reads that as my saying I am vetoing her travelling up to her house in the borders which sets selfish alarms off because that's where they get the dialogue which results in her claiming hardship, getting cash payouts etc. She has trained her mother to relate to her in this way, and this suggestion, though for the good of the old lady, was inconsistent with her selfish needs.
Example. Yesterday my mother said very little, but one thing she said to me was "if (sister) is getting a taxi all the way here from Reading then I must give her some money for the fare". She is 55 and runs a business. That's a trained, relationship-of-need- driven comment. Both of them are responsible for propagating this. Mum loves to be needed and cannot cope with the transition from mother/carer to OAP/caree; sister loves to be supported and cannot cope with the responsibility of adulthood which requires her to be dependent on nobody. That same behaviour causes cheques to be written to bail out things. So, 2 years ago, my mother went to stay, then came back and paid for them to get a new kitchen built. FFS.
Last time I got a bail out was when I was an undergraduate. When I told my parents I was going to give up my job (in telecoms) in 1992 and go back to university and become a lawyer they made clear that I would have to work out how to fund it, so I did. My sister had a job at that time but was on a stipend through university and for years to follow, even beyond her wedding. She was on a monthly allowance into her 40s until my father died when I worked this out with my brother and we cancelled it. We were going through the financials and found a standing order set up in 1985 and still paying out in 2009. How can her husband have been comfortable with that? Answer - Hermes tie psyche. Also he's taken £500k from their original house, put it in his business and lost it, then swallowed more from my mother (not limited to kitchen).
It is the injustice and inequity. I treat my children as equally loved and cannot imagine how this sort of imbalance can occur but for manipulative behaviour. How would you favour a child over others? How would you not know you're doing it? How unnatural. I don't want more stuff, I just want equality of relationship.
For me, the "stuff" is irrelevant. It is all about repeated bad behaviour whether it's greed, lying, taking advantage of people's good nature and then kicking them in the teeth when their purpose is served etc etc. All so very unpleasant. Of course it should have been challenged at the time but it wasn't.
these ways of being are ingrained from the day the child learns to cry in a certain way to get what they want ahead of others, and discovers the secret to manipulating the balanced process of parenting, and when the parent takes the decision to override the alarm bell in their head which says "this can't be right" and stuffs the whole thing up with shite logic and ex post facto blarney. Once that's that, it's fixed through childhood, adolescence and into adulthood. It remains so and can't be broken or you're the aggressor. It then takes a nasty turn where the emotional basis for engagement then becomes a significant play in the infirm years. Once the poison is ingested, that is just how it is. There is no point in the "should have been challenged" thought. FIDO - fook it, drive on.
"Mum loves to be needed and cannot cope with the transition from mother/carer to OAP/caree ...... I don't want more stuff, I just want equality of relationship."
Yep. Me too. Our mother has always wanted to be needed and to keep the relationship parent-child rather than equal adult to adult. This works well on the small scale, like her feeling that she is still the hostess, when we stay in her house; but it has served her badly at the big picture level.
“Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood.” ― George Orwell.
Mutters for once I disagree with you. Not challenging bad behaviour is like lying down in front of the door and wondering why people walk over you. Yes it upsets the status quo but it is better than letting the nastiness fester.
Ronald - mine always wanted to make lunches, run Christmas etc but we had to stop acquiescing to this need (presented as super generosity but actually it's to do with not wanting to give up being relied on). I killed it by agreeing to do Christmas for everyone (23, gah) and set the challenge for others to do this in rotation (again, gah). This all went fine for a few Christmases and then my sister asked for money to cover her costs.
I have a filthy rich and childless aunt. She has 2 nieces and 2 nephews. She is also a vile piece of sh1t. I have been disowned for refusing to be nice to her.
Mutters in my case I know how it all started and it was actually from the moment I was born. Mum says she returned from hospital with me and sis turned her back on mum, refused to talk to her.
mum’s reaction? “ Well, that finished me off”
Now we are adult, Mum readily acknowldges the favouritism, the manipulative behaviour and YET STILL enables it. Ffs.
Tbh I dont think it has done sis any favours. Her entire life has become a vanity project, acquiring baubles and lifestyle to support her notion of I’m Worth It.
epic indeed wang, and minkie's "from birth" experience is not far from mine. I am the youngest of 4 and recall vividly, aged about 3, having to keep my head down in bed while my sister aged 5 raged and screamed around the house seeking attention at bedtime. A sort of nightly show of proprietorial control over the parents.
We do epic feuds too. One has gone on for 35+ years. They are prize sh*ts and it is best to have as little to do with them as possible. They make my skin crawl.
Mutters I expect the problem with your sister is this habit we all have of reverting to our position/player within the family, whenever we are in family company.
so your sister with her own business etc gets stuck in this need to be permanently viewed through the prism of her youthful neediness, even now that it is as unhelpful as it is inappropriate.
hey I dare you to actually say this to her, and that she needs to drop the helpless female act, for the sake of your mother’s needs going forward.
however, the mere dealing with mum thing (on the 10 year anniversary of Dad's death) is a head fook enough and taking up too much time all round for everyone, and a massive 100 megaton explosion and fall out is probably an unhelpful side show. There are other things in my life which need balancing with all this too. I can't take that on.
No wonder so many of you are mental. Your families sound like massive pricks.
I can't think of anything with any financial merit coming my way in the event of my parents dying. Me and my older sibling bought their house and that's going to my younger sis (who earns less next to nothing).
The only stress I have is that I'm not a huge fan of my sister's husband and worry they might not have a future and he'll get half of stuff that we've given her.
I guess the passing of stuff is a poor v established wealthy person thing. Povvos in my exp constantly renew and replace when new money comes in so there's not much time to establish a sentimental connection. Rich people seem to take great pride in wearing their dead dad's Barbour jacket in which he was caught floating a badger which in turn was inherited from their dad's dad who originally got the coat in a dogging layby whilst trying to recreate the thrill of public school
Bam I started off thinking that but then there’s never been any cash in my family either and they still all fall out over the cutlery or some statue someone won at a fair. I do agree having money in a family does seem to often lead to this though.
the only thing I got when my old man died was his tag heuer. In a crime against rofamity I ebayed it (having wiped off the blood) and shared the gains with my old dear and my sisters.
Thanks, Bam, for the laugh and the explanation. I was trying to work out what "floating the badger" was a euphemism for and I was, frankly, struggling. But it should be something.
"Here, Dave, hold my pint while I show you some pics of me and Spunky Eric floating the badger at Knebworth. It was mental. Eric had had at least a longboat's worth of pencil and I'd been doing road cones for three days so was on the long road back from a baboonskin blanket. There was a lot of Cheeky Malcolm on offer but thank God we avoided that. I only had two pezzes and then I was off on the coach trip to see the Dalai Llama. When I came back it I was crying blancmange."
However, I've been thinking it over and there is some positive here. I take away the fact that there's a lot of this about and it is just another example of the stupidity of people, but the key is to ignore that and cherish people when they are alive and to enjoy the little things with them because they won't be there for long. I cooked her some nice meals and kept her drinking fluids and had a bit of a monologue (it was meant to be a conversation but she was not doing much more than the odd grunt*). That's the stuff to remember, not the bitchy shit.
Here's an anecdote to balance things out. My grandmother died last year and since she wasn't much of a hoarder she didn't leave a huge amount in terms of personal effects. After her funeral people started tentatively discussing who wanted what. I laid claim to a mug which reminded me of my childhood. The rest of the grandchildren (a couple of whom are, IMO, quite selfish) also only wanted various bits of worthless crap which had particular sentimental value to them. My brother took all the family photos to scan and has had photobooks made for everyone.
On the other side of the family my grandparents were hoarders and I can already tell that the battle over who gets what is going to get quite nasty. (In my parents' generation, not mine.)
Don't hoard stuff, people. Marie Kondo the shit out of your life on a regular basis and spare your children all this when you're gone.
I have recently discovered via my neice that my octagenarian parents paid my nephew's boarding school fees. At a rough calculation we are looking north of £150K. My sibling has never mentioned it. I had always wondered how they afforded the fees. Pants and kittens.
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My mother, in widowhood, had a stroke in 2014 and did well to bounce back but now every illness takes a bigger bite out of her than before. She has had a really bad one this last 10 days requiring all four of us to rally round and here I am now sitting in her typically roasting house, having cooked three meals for her and her fridge, awaiting handover to sibling who is training down from the north to relieve the shift. Dunno whether this is the biggie or just an incident but we have had two hospital emergencies and now she is in the sleepy incoherent interim phase between rallying and declining. Let us see.
An amusing aside in a grim weekend: in a lucid phase, she answered a couple of questions I had about stuff in her kitchen. Cannot make out the logic of where anything goes. Under the decanter of sherry, which sits in a silver coaster, I saw glinting through the glass there is a message to herself with a number to ring to someone in the Philippines. I said what is this. She said it’s to provide spare altar frontals to a charity in the Phillippines that require CofE church kit - some mission or other. She, being a church warden of yore, is happily giving away spare stuff and this is the number to ring. I said ‘ why is it under the decanter?’ And she said it’s to remind her so she put it in a place she’s be bound to see (every time she lifts the decanter, throughout the day). I see.
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Aged
why cant rof accept this word
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Mutters there is always humour in dealings with the elderly.
we are facing a milestone also, Mum aged 80 finally downsizing from a house stuffed with treasures. My sole sibling, an avaricious sister, has been feasting on the carcass!
I feel for you about the note about the Philippines. A gazillion and one important things you have tried to drum into her to remember and the only important item is something like this. FFS.
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Yes. And it is telling that the underside of the sherry decanter is the go-to, frequently visited reminder spot.
To use one of her favourite words of her generation, she is totally doo-lally right now. Struggling with the battle of staying in play.
No, I am not going to real time post her death. I’m just distracting myself while she sleeps.
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Your second para, Minkie, is identical to my experience of 18 months ago. The shark feeding frenzy between 4 children and - perhaps worse - the horrifying level of giveaway of important things to temporary and opportunistic do-gooders who vanished once paid out. Yuk.
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sis is in charge of the whole move ( she engineered it in first place, solely cos fed up of the journey up north to visit).
i am not surprised by her behaviour, long been expecting it. But as a daughter to mum i am pissed off at playing second fiddle to my sister’s feckless children, they can fvcking wait in line.
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Urrgh. This is all a bag of difficulties.
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I bought my dad a Hardy fly rod and reel for his retirement present in 1992. Think Bentley or Cristal of trout fishing kit. It was a shockingly expensive thing proportionately speaking as my salary was £15k P.A. and it was about a month’s net income. When he died I discovered my mum had given it to my errant nephew. He then dbayed it for gap year funds. Where do you even start.
you don’t. You ignore and pretend it never existed. It’s just money and things.
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I’m with you on second fiddle to sister’s children.
Don’t get me started
We have much much much in common
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That must have been very hurtful mutters.
my sis’ latest asset stripping: a bronze sculture poss worth in SEVEN figures if bought from auction house. A villa abroad. She thinks big does my sister.
i also hate how my other lets her bully her, she has done it all her life. Only thing i can do is write to mother’s lawyer so at least it becomes documented.
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Cannot tell if the sis on way down is doing so to care for her mother or has suddenly realised she needs some face time at the big denouement in case her absence damages her family’s prospects after many years of working hard to stay in a tactical position on it all
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oh the latter for sure.
i am reminded of those stories in Latin class about the fortune hunters. Been going on for millenia.
where there’s a will there’s a relative.
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Grim
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the one item from mums house i showed an interest in she said i could have, then decided, actually shed take it with her after all.
great.
and then, just to help her out really, i said i’d take some of the biographies from the massive, massive book collection. Seems even they are now destined for elsewhere! I think i have been rubbed out of the family.
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I had this. I was away, overseas. Mum put a message out to everyone to go to her house (pre move) and put stickers on things we wanted. I turned up weeks later to find everything in the house covered in stickers as others had got in there. I refused to engage in that. I felt very strongly about not boiling it all down to horrible childish selfishness. Turns out I’m wrong and they are right.
Some weeks later I said ‘ok, I’d like a couple of things - this thing and that thing’ and was told they had already gone.
i got a broken chair - kid you not. A nice antique chair with an arm hanging off and a leg in difficulties. I restored it and don’t like it any more.
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Asked for two other things instead but mum decided she was keeping those for the new house.
Gave up. Got a painting my wife hates. It’s still sitting in a corner somewhere. No way that’s hitting our walls.
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mutters it is quite comforting to hear i am not alone. Makes my sister and mother less monstrous somehow.
but i still feel v sorry for you. ( when i queried the valuable sculpture with mum she said i could have some garden water feature sculpture instead, its q pretty but is also broken!)
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you’re not alone.
She had two ornate lead garden urns. Someone tried to nick them once but I had attached them to the ground with big bolts and cement. Anyway, she was leaving and I said I’d have those for the garden. We emptied them and tried to cut off the bolts with a hacksaw. I said I would come back the next day with an angle grinder. In between those two events my sister’s husband- so not even one of us - drove up, ripped them off their bases and took them away to Scotland.
fook me.
This is the same guy who, when my dad died, called me and said ‘if you’ve got all your father’s ties can you bring them over as I gave him a Hermes one last Christmas and would like it back please’
i took all the ties and shoved all of them through the letter box and refused to go in. He then wrote to me and said the Hermes one isn’t there, can I have it please.
What
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Makes me laugh now.
I sarcastically bought him a Hermes tie for his 50th a few years back. Disgusting one.
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You lot got off lightly
My cousin's mother hired a skip and chucked everything she could carry, paintings, photographs etc into it, and set fire to it
The children could have the furniture so long as they paid for it
Anything genuinely valuable she flogged off at Sothebys
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Hermesgate was 10 days after my father died and the day after his funeral. Srsly. Mental
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This sounds so much like my father's family. He is the eldest of 6 children, worked his butt off on the family farm and ended up with zilch after his parents died. This in itself was bearable, if unfair, because his grandfather didn't like him and could deal with his estate as he pleased. What is unbearable is having to listen to one of my uncles claiming that he too had nothing when he and his capricious wife had plundered everything of any value. Makes me feel sick.
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Aagh. I meant my grandfather. What an unremitting shit he was.
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A rather depressing thread. Me and my brother, the likely heirs, don't even talk about it. I suspect he thinks like me and doesn't really want anything.
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All relationships are different, of course so advice can’t really be offered.
Having lost both parents when I was relatively young, especially with my mum, I torment myself about how selfish I was with my time.
I should have made more time for them, instead I disappeared from their lives to fanny around the world... ...I made it back to see my mum die, but my dad died in a home and I wasn’t with him.
If I close my eyes I can still see them in the coffin, faces distorted by the departure of the soul and the ham fisted efforts of the undertaker... ...no last chance for explanations, which is perhaps a good thing - I’d probably balls that up as well.
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We have let this become a materiality whinge which it wasn’t intended to be when I started out. Was focusing on the funny moment in a no fun weekend.
Worst aspect of this is my children are back home from boarding school and I didn’t see them much. They have returned to school worrying about granny. I would have liked to be there to reassure.
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Chambers
well done. Thank you for your contribution.
yours,
muttley
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I am making time now and I’m pleased I made time with dad. We said stuff and settled issues.
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These last two posts are like a poem in their juxtaposition
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I meant fluffy@1934 and then the next
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You can blame yourself Fluffy, but the days are long gone when you could get a decent job in the local town
Children today have to move away
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My sister has already ceremoniously taken ownership of the silver toast rack. But she is the eldest so it was always going to be her. Still felt a pang of envy -a tiny one- tho, when she shoved it down her top at the breakfast table two Christmases ago.
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Sorry to hear its going like this, both of you.
Our mother is, either temporarily or not, in a nursing home, by the sea, near her own house. We her children are each arriving in turn into her house, using it as a base while we visit.
We are sane, and no one is asset stripping, and I know that we're lucky and that more often I happens like you are describing.
We find decanter/Philipino church kit type notes-to-self each time we tidy one layer deeper. It freaked me out and made me sad but now I have reached a stage of thinking ' this shit happens to everyone in the end, get used to it' .
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I would have cut that Hermes tie up and posted it back to him. And then had nothing more to do with him.
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My children will have to have that fight unless I bury it. Yes, something for Tony Robinson from Time Team to sort out.
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My more sound sister (whose shift I took over from) and I were reflecting that it will happen to us too.
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Not if euthanasia is finally legal by then
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Maybe Tolstoy was incorrect about unhappy families. At least when it comes to dividing the spoils.
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My sole remaining parent is 83 and has a touch of the cancers. Having lived abroad for 25ish years, my brother has moved into her spare room, partly as she pays for everything and partly so he can wait for the funeral (his admission). They’re filthy to each other, it’s real distressing- she has learned the C word and calls him one regularly, sometimes in front of doctors. The last appointment he took her to - about time it was his turn since he didn’t even visit her on the last admission which was 3 miles up the road yet 30 from me and I was the one dealing with it. The doc apparently commented on what an unusual family dynamic it is. Proving hard to be nice / have great sympathy for her given the nasty aggression she doles out (apparently not dementia), and past history.
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Fvcking hell you lot...
You are all caring about the spoils... either by bitching about how someone else has got more or by getting more...Have a word with yourself. I was orphaned at 8 and so never had these issues... I feel lucky!
For the first time EVER! #bemoreChambo
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Oh and, of course, Fluffy! Come to my rural idyll and let me comfort you. Nest your head in my ample bosom ;)
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Actually DW the thread was about comic weirdness as I sat nursing an ill mother. It then diverted but at least for me and Minkie there was some comfort in knowing this horrible behaviour was more common than we thought. As with all threads, if this ain’t your scene then you can just leave it and read something else.
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Yeah, yeah Mutters... you take any criticism as well as usual.
It's a discussion board, putting it on here invites discussion. Otherwise, get a whatsapp group.
It took you two posts to divert this into a discussion about a "shark feeding frenzy".
This is a thread, not about caring for the elderly, but about the avaricious nature of sharing the spoils.
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In my family we mostly deal with these issues by being poor...
Did have some fun and games when my grandparents passed though. One of my dad’s sisters, who lived in the house next door, insisted that the grandparents had always said that she would get their driveway when grandparents passed.
Dad and the other sister couldn’t be bothered to fight it - so lawyers fees to carve out the driveway and complete cratering of the value of the house (a 3 bed semi in Farnborough) and hence everyone else’s inheritance.
Sister then moved a couple of years later...
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A very pertinent thread. I too have aged and chronically, lapsing from time to time into acutely, ill mum. One sister is currently living with her doing the care, dishing out the astonishing array of drugs, and bullying her to eat and exercise. I am doing a weekend shift later this week to give her some respite, on the other side of the country which means a tedious drive at risk of speed cameras.
It has been interesting how, over the last couple of years, my mum has wanted to declutter and give things away. I think it is preparation for an orderly exit. All the baking stuff, to sister 1. Dad’s outdoor clothes, me. Contents of the drink cupboard (noxious 1970s and 80s liquers and spirits), mostly me. A teapot from the extensive collection, my wife. And on it goes. When she was last very ill in hospital we had another discussion (there have been many) about where things should go, jewellery and such like, which grandchild, generally. I suggested she mght like to give some of these things while she was still with us (and which she never wears), make a personal gift, get some pleasure from giving, but no, there has to be a vague expression of wishes for me to interpret later...
The one thing she is very clear about is that sister 3 is to be let nowhere near her stuff, she will be picking it over within hours and have most if it in the skip. This is a real concern and one which we as executors will need to counter by changing the locks.
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Orphaned at 8 is very sad
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Muttley28 Jan 19 08:52
Orphaned at 8 is very sad
Muttley... it actually depends how crap your parents were... ;)
I felt the loss of my grandmother more (in that same year) because she brought me up.
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Sad too to grow up in a family where you know, even as a young child, that your lovely father is being treated badly and where favouritism runs riot. The repercussions are still swirling around.
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I felt the loss of my grandmother more (in that same year) because she brought me up.
yikes
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I've always felt sorry for myself as an only child, knowing that when the time comes I will have to deal with this sh1t by myself. This thread is making me feel better. At least I won't have to put my energies into fending off feckless grabby siblings.
Anyway, I'm encouraging my parents to spaff all their cash on having fun. I think they have listened. They have been on so many cruises they are now Platinum Uber cruisers or something. Good on them.
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Nex
I've been encouraging my mother to do likewise. not cruises, but travel and luxury. When she is worried about driving somewhere, I say get a car to take you, wait and bring you back. She says "that's hundreds of pounds" and gets fearful of the extravagance. War baby. The alternative, though, is the tiring drive, stress of navigation (she will not do SatNav) and having to leave before it gets dark etc. then being exhausted afterwards. I also ask her to travel on planes business or first and to enjoy life a bit. She is very parsimonious. Part of that comes from the past and the rest is the fear of the future. how long will she need her money for etc. It will come to us all.
M
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Nex - how did you feel about being an only child when you were growing up? What other aspects (if any!) of being an only child still irk?
on topic - my folks are late 80s and still almost completely independent, Phil the Greek's incident has revived my concerns about their driving and, inevitably, there's going to come a time when they aren't going to be independent....... my mum is i'm sure showing early signs of dementia but noone wants to admit it.
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exactly the same prob with driving and "extravagance" of having someone drive you somewhere - both grew up in war time / immediate post war (real) austerity and (despite having been financially successful) struggle to spend money on themselves.
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Another thing.
my mother was upsold a stupidly aggressive car when she had her tired Audi A3 with a dead head gasket towed away and scrapped. The Audi garage then sold an 82 year old woman a 2.5l RS3 which develops 340 horse power and pretty much achieves involuntary donuts when parking. The fook.
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I’m with Chambo on this. I have a few relatives who can’t be too far off now, including a 99 year old grandmother. People do fuss about all this shit, but I cannot be bothered with it in the slightest. A small memento of the person would be nice but that’s about it.
I half suspect that’s why my great uncle left me everything when he died as he knew I wasn’t in The least bit interested in ‘stuff’.
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Further on the notes-under-the-decanter thing. My mother doesn't have dementia or Alzheimers, but her mental energy keeps reducing. I do hand it to her for finding ways to get things done.
In January, she has been grimly determinedly taking care of renewing her various insurances. She is not able for various reason to use her laptop or the Internet connection at the nursing home so I watched her, for her house insurance -
- writing a cheque
- to her nephew who is her insurance broker
- whose office address she doesn't have to hand, without sending someone to the house for her larger address book
- so , addressing an envelope to the nephew's younger brother, whose address she knows by heart because he currently lives in her late sister's house. She's not confused, she knows the two nephews live in the same town and the one will get the cheque to the other.
If you are thinking 'wouldn't it be better to re-set-up the laptop / go to the house to get the other address book/ do the insurance payment yourself' - we are torn all the time about doing things for her. It seems to break a thread and she gives up areas of responsibility irreversibly unless she keeps doing them on muscle memory. And, as above, ingenuity.
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You played your cards well, young Tecco
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dpw, there are pros and cons
Pros:
more parental attention - became very at ease in older company
probably more travel than they would have done with more kids
good close relationship with both parents
formed very close friendships (in place of sibling relationships maybe?)
Cons:
dealing with the illness and old age stuff mentioned upthread
boredom/loneliness during childhood
back in the 80s you were an anomaly and viewed as a bit of a curiosity by teachers and peers (less so these days)
those very close friendships mentioned above fade a bit when people start settling down (could be the same for siblings as people start their own families I guess)
Suffice to say, when planning a family Mr Nex (who has a sibling) and I decided we wanted two kids. He liked having a brother and I did find childhood a bit lonely at times. However, Mother Nature had other ideas, so we have an only too.
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thanks nex for that - v much. we just have one and are trying to decide about another..... nature might have other ideas anyway as you say.
i remember the slight stigma attaching to only kids when i was at school but i think that's all gone
i think the ageing parents is the only one i really worry about... if we only have one i'm going to do everything i can to make sure he's not lonely!
i have a sister and my best friend from aged about eight is like a brother really
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Muttley - Jesus, the car thing too!
some "old man" (ie only a couple of years older than her) wrote off her car in the waitrose car park. Cue a panicked visit to Mercedes who, instead of replacing her dull ugly sedan for the same dull ugly sedan sold her the whizzier version with low profile tyres and 18" alloys plus only two doors so the door is so fooking heavy that she can barely close it. The wheels jar her bones painfully at every tiny bump in the road. Visibility out of the back window is so poor that she just ignores it.
Really, she should be using taxis instead and should appreciate that the cost of running this beast plus all the running bodywork repairs from when she clips the edges on bollards, in car parks, on other cars etc etc is actually far more than an account at a cab company would cost her. Her eyesight isn't great and so she doesn't drive in the dark but won't use cabs with strange drivers at night so for half the year she doesn't so much as go to the fookign cinema in the evening because taxi. Even durin gthe daytime, she's reluctant to use cabs because her hearing is terrible so she can't understand what they're saying as they speak forwards and she can't see their mouth move and then she imagines that each time they're taking a short route to avoid traffic that they're kidnapping her and selling her into the white slave trade. (hence why I end up with a 100 mile round trip to take her to the hospital when my brother is in. the. fooking. spare. room. He's not allowed to drive her car because it's too powerful for him - go figure).
Whatever DW might think about the issue, I too am finding some comfort in this thread. (can we add in to the mix youngish kids who need collecting / taking places / 11+ exams and all that shit at the same time?)
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ARGH - ROnald Coase - you as well! she will drive (see above), very badly, to the supermarket every day to carry the one small bag of groceries she can manage in one go (see above: brother living in spare room but not contributing a single thing financially or practically) because she refuses to put card details into the supermarket online ordering.
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DPW, I do think there is less of a stigma now than there was when I were a lass. However, you will still hear people say "only children are..." in sentences where they would never say "black people are..." or "jewish people are...". Like gingers, we are one of the few minority groups it is still ok to stereotype and mock.
Sorry for the thread derail, mutts.
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(can we add in to the mix youngish kids who need collecting / taking places / 11+ exams and all that shit at the same time?)
- I am in an A level and GCSE mock cage of despair. The cage is real not mock. you know what I mean. I feel your pain.
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*fistbump*
(and 18 year old cats. I know you have your hound issues too. I am in a perpetual state of panic over future cat death, even though they are both fit as fiddles.)
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Hound is well. Hair has grown over the scar. Running round like nothing happened. reprieved.
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"Dogwarden28 Jan 19 07:39
Fvcking hell you lot...
You are all caring about the spoils... either by bitching about how someone else has got more or by getting more...Have a word with yourself."
-----------
This, and still this in some cases.
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The thing is, it's manifested as "stuff" but generally that's not what hurts. It's not that one sibling got way more than the other. It's the hurt that translates from a parent marginalising one child, intentionally or otherwise. It's the feeling that your position in that person's life is less than you hoped it would be. It's very complicated.
Sure, some people, particularly in extended family, can be greedy twots. But I think if you're close to someone and you're overlooked it compounds the grief that you already feel about losing them in life or in mind.
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Yeah, it's often not stuff but the sentiment you attach to stuff.
My gran said she wanted me to have her jewellery. She was not a wealthy woman. It was probably all worthless. But it was her wish and it was bound up with my memories of her. Unfortunately some delightful carer/cleaner/"friend" stole it along with anything else of possible value from her place at some point when she was ill. That makes me said. Not cos I grabbily wanted to get my hands on her shiny stuff, but for sentimental reasons.
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Ofc the sentiment is important, which is why I referred to being “rubbed out” of the family. Dont get me started on the favouritism.
my mother has said, dont fall out with your sister when I die. Well, mum, perhaps dont bloody give her everything then, its not helping.
i am not an only child but we had four parents ( two steps) so the burden still very great. Both fathers gone ( a truly dreadful time four or five years ago) and two more left, both now beginning the long flight down into the cellar ( which is whatbthe decline feels like).
re the driving - there is an extremely helpful US website seniordriving.AAA.com about how to drive safely when older/how to persuade parent to pack it in when appropriate.
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This (below) is depressing....
"My gran said she wanted me to have her jewellery. She was not a wealthy woman. It was probably all worthless. But it was her wish and it was bound up with my memories of her. Unfortunately some delightful carer/cleaner/"friend" stole it along with anything else of possible value from her place at some point when she was ill. "
The corrosive thing for me - in similar circs - is the horrible suspicion hovering over everybody who might be the culprit. parents also paranoid that we (their adult children) are helping ourselves to stuff - laughed off when reminded (for example) that the picture referred to is hanging over the stairs and has been for over a decade....
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much like arbiter, my family is dealing with this by being poor and have nothing to pass down
My older brother is the caring one in the family so if either of my parents ever get to that stage they will move in with him.
Thankfully neither of my parents are in their 60's yet
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This thread is grim. I only got about a third of the way down.
This is why it's best to try to eschew material possessions in favour of experiences and putting cash away for your children.
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Minkie
sorry to hear all this. Sounds very familiar .
I was reminded yesterday that some things cannot be sorted with logical analysis. My failing is that I fight fire with fact and it doesn't solve. My older sister and I see eye to eye. My brother and I see eye to eye. My younger sister is a different species of human. It's like we are all Neanderthals happy in our cave and then there is this Sapiens making shit up and living by an entirely opposite moral code.
Yesterday evening my younger one turned up to take over the vigil and I was surprised and disappointed to be reminded that she, aged 55, is still a child. I talk about what we need to do to provide care and a more sustainable lifestyle for our mother and what the other two had to say in agreement with me. She, however, opposes anything that has a downside that involves her getting less support. So, I said maybe we need her to travel around less, reduce her ambitions and anxieties, get her comfortable with her own company on the domestic front, less stretched and frantic. sister immediately reads that as my saying I am vetoing her travelling up to her house in the borders which sets selfish alarms off because that's where they get the dialogue which results in her claiming hardship, getting cash payouts etc. She has trained her mother to relate to her in this way, and this suggestion, though for the good of the old lady, was inconsistent with her selfish needs.
Example. Yesterday my mother said very little, but one thing she said to me was "if (sister) is getting a taxi all the way here from Reading then I must give her some money for the fare". She is 55 and runs a business. That's a trained, relationship-of-need- driven comment. Both of them are responsible for propagating this. Mum loves to be needed and cannot cope with the transition from mother/carer to OAP/caree; sister loves to be supported and cannot cope with the responsibility of adulthood which requires her to be dependent on nobody. That same behaviour causes cheques to be written to bail out things. So, 2 years ago, my mother went to stay, then came back and paid for them to get a new kitchen built. FFS.
Last time I got a bail out was when I was an undergraduate. When I told my parents I was going to give up my job (in telecoms) in 1992 and go back to university and become a lawyer they made clear that I would have to work out how to fund it, so I did. My sister had a job at that time but was on a stipend through university and for years to follow, even beyond her wedding. She was on a monthly allowance into her 40s until my father died when I worked this out with my brother and we cancelled it. We were going through the financials and found a standing order set up in 1985 and still paying out in 2009. How can her husband have been comfortable with that? Answer - Hermes tie psyche. Also he's taken £500k from their original house, put it in his business and lost it, then swallowed more from my mother (not limited to kitchen).
It is the injustice and inequity. I treat my children as equally loved and cannot imagine how this sort of imbalance can occur but for manipulative behaviour. How would you favour a child over others? How would you not know you're doing it? How unnatural. I don't want more stuff, I just want equality of relationship.
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For me, the "stuff" is irrelevant. It is all about repeated bad behaviour whether it's greed, lying, taking advantage of people's good nature and then kicking them in the teeth when their purpose is served etc etc. All so very unpleasant. Of course it should have been challenged at the time but it wasn't.
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Ah yes favouritism. My father's family specialised in that.
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these ways of being are ingrained from the day the child learns to cry in a certain way to get what they want ahead of others, and discovers the secret to manipulating the balanced process of parenting, and when the parent takes the decision to override the alarm bell in their head which says "this can't be right" and stuffs the whole thing up with shite logic and ex post facto blarney. Once that's that, it's fixed through childhood, adolescence and into adulthood. It remains so and can't be broken or you're the aggressor. It then takes a nasty turn where the emotional basis for engagement then becomes a significant play in the infirm years. Once the poison is ingested, that is just how it is. There is no point in the "should have been challenged" thought. FIDO - fook it, drive on.
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2 comments to muttley's last:
- I don't think Reading can be counted as the borders
- it is entirely reasonable to expect to be compensated for going to reading
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"Mum loves to be needed and cannot cope with the transition from mother/carer to OAP/caree ...... I don't want more stuff, I just want equality of relationship."
Yep. Me too. Our mother has always wanted to be needed and to keep the relationship parent-child rather than equal adult to adult. This works well on the small scale, like her feeling that she is still the hostess, when we stay in her house; but it has served her badly at the big picture level.
“Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood.” ― George Orwell.
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heh @ wang. to be clear: King's cross, Paddington, Reading. But the compo point is correct.
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Mutters for once I disagree with you. Not challenging bad behaviour is like lying down in front of the door and wondering why people walk over you. Yes it upsets the status quo but it is better than letting the nastiness fester.
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Ronald - mine always wanted to make lunches, run Christmas etc but we had to stop acquiescing to this need (presented as super generosity but actually it's to do with not wanting to give up being relied on). I killed it by agreeing to do Christmas for everyone (23, gah) and set the challenge for others to do this in rotation (again, gah). This all went fine for a few Christmases and then my sister asked for money to cover her costs.
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Gwen - maybe, and I agreed with that in earlier life resulting in a ten year feud. Life's too short.
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your sister sounds like an epic dick tbf mutters.
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I have a filthy rich and childless aunt. She has 2 nieces and 2 nephews. She is also a vile piece of sh1t. I have been disowned for refusing to be nice to her.
*clutches grandma's pearls*
Oh well....
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Mutters in my case I know how it all started and it was actually from the moment I was born. Mum says she returned from hospital with me and sis turned her back on mum, refused to talk to her.
mum’s reaction? “ Well, that finished me off”
Now we are adult, Mum readily acknowldges the favouritism, the manipulative behaviour and YET STILL enables it. Ffs.
Tbh I dont think it has done sis any favours. Her entire life has become a vanity project, acquiring baubles and lifestyle to support her notion of I’m Worth It.
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epic indeed wang, and minkie's "from birth" experience is not far from mine. I am the youngest of 4 and recall vividly, aged about 3, having to keep my head down in bed while my sister aged 5 raged and screamed around the house seeking attention at bedtime. A sort of nightly show of proprietorial control over the parents.
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We do epic feuds too. One has gone on for 35+ years. They are prize sh*ts and it is best to have as little to do with them as possible. They make my skin crawl.
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Mutters I expect the problem with your sister is this habit we all have of reverting to our position/player within the family, whenever we are in family company.
so your sister with her own business etc gets stuck in this need to be permanently viewed through the prism of her youthful neediness, even now that it is as unhelpful as it is inappropriate.
hey I dare you to actually say this to her, and that she needs to drop the helpless female act, for the sake of your mother’s needs going forward.
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quite tempting and probably correct
however, the mere dealing with mum thing (on the 10 year anniversary of Dad's death) is a head fook enough and taking up too much time all round for everyone, and a massive 100 megaton explosion and fall out is probably an unhelpful side show. There are other things in my life which need balancing with all this too. I can't take that on.
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No wonder so many of you are mental. Your families sound like massive pricks.
I can't think of anything with any financial merit coming my way in the event of my parents dying. Me and my older sibling bought their house and that's going to my younger sis (who earns less next to nothing).
The only stress I have is that I'm not a huge fan of my sister's husband and worry they might not have a future and he'll get half of stuff that we've given her.
I guess the passing of stuff is a poor v established wealthy person thing. Povvos in my exp constantly renew and replace when new money comes in so there's not much time to establish a sentimental connection. Rich people seem to take great pride in wearing their dead dad's Barbour jacket in which he was caught floating a badger which in turn was inherited from their dad's dad who originally got the coat in a dogging layby whilst trying to recreate the thrill of public school
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Fellating
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Bam I started off thinking that but then there’s never been any cash in my family either and they still all fall out over the cutlery or some statue someone won at a fair. I do agree having money in a family does seem to often lead to this though.
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Only thing id want to have would be a few records from my dad's record collection
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the only thing I got when my old man died was his tag heuer. In a crime against rofamity I ebayed it (having wiped off the blood) and shared the gains with my old dear and my sisters.
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Thanks, Bam, for the laugh and the explanation. I was trying to work out what "floating the badger" was a euphemism for and I was, frankly, struggling. But it should be something.
"Here, Dave, hold my pint while I show you some pics of me and Spunky Eric floating the badger at Knebworth. It was mental. Eric had had at least a longboat's worth of pencil and I'd been doing road cones for three days so was on the long road back from a baboonskin blanket. There was a lot of Cheeky Malcolm on offer but thank God we avoided that. I only had two pezzes and then I was off on the coach trip to see the Dalai Llama. When I came back it I was crying blancmange."
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thanks, Rof, I was in quite a good mood before i read this
so depressing
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Sorry. We got distracted.
However, I've been thinking it over and there is some positive here. I take away the fact that there's a lot of this about and it is just another example of the stupidity of people, but the key is to ignore that and cherish people when they are alive and to enjoy the little things with them because they won't be there for long. I cooked her some nice meals and kept her drinking fluids and had a bit of a monologue (it was meant to be a conversation but she was not doing much more than the odd grunt*). That's the stuff to remember, not the bitchy shit.
*must have been the veggies
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Here's an anecdote to balance things out. My grandmother died last year and since she wasn't much of a hoarder she didn't leave a huge amount in terms of personal effects. After her funeral people started tentatively discussing who wanted what. I laid claim to a mug which reminded me of my childhood. The rest of the grandchildren (a couple of whom are, IMO, quite selfish) also only wanted various bits of worthless crap which had particular sentimental value to them. My brother took all the family photos to scan and has had photobooks made for everyone.
On the other side of the family my grandparents were hoarders and I can already tell that the battle over who gets what is going to get quite nasty. (In my parents' generation, not mine.)
Don't hoard stuff, people. Marie Kondo the shit out of your life on a regular basis and spare your children all this when you're gone.
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I have recently discovered via my neice that my octagenarian parents paid my nephew's boarding school fees. At a rough calculation we are looking north of £150K. My sibling has never mentioned it. I had always wondered how they afforded the fees. Pants and kittens.
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I love the fact u expect mutters to know what marie kondo-ing is. i sure as shyt dont
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