Tuesday, April 27, 2004
Brother calls
Friday, April 23, 2004
New information
They said to me "guess who went to your mother's memorial service?". They did, of course. And the evil sister told them that I didn't WANT to be there because god would be mentioned. The reason that I wouldn't be there is because I wasn't told about it AND because even if I had been told about it I wouldn't have attended out of respect for our mother's wishes which were totally violated by the nature of the service.
I've been to plenty of memorial services and god is often mentioned. That is the choice of the family and the deceased. I just would have thought that plain and simple respect for our mother would dictate the type of service that was held.
Oh, I am so furious at that evil person.
Wednesday, April 21, 2004
A good place to start
The evil sister's apology
A letter received appropriately on April fool's day.
I am tempted to point out the frailty of the writing within her letter (such as the twenty (20) "I" statements in the letter, her poor sentence construction, and her run-on and nonsensical statements). Oh, well. She must have been agonizing about this for weeks. Too bad she didn't take time to put together something which had some logic to it. She could have initially picked up a phone. What a coward.
Dear ...........
I have wasted a lot of time trying to figure out how to write this so that you will read it,
How about in logical English?
but realize I cannot control that at all, so here it is.
You might not be able to control how I read this, but you sure wanted to control everything else, specifically wresting control of what kind of memorial service that would be held even though it was clearly against our mother's wishes.
I first want to tell you
What do you second want to tell me?
how sorry I am that I did not tell you about the memorial service at ...... I was wrong to have made that decision and choice for you, assuming that you would disapprove,
which of course I would have and DID!
would not have wanted to be there, that you would have been opposed to that fact that it was done so soon,
Well, I guess you admit it was done so soon - too soon.
or to its context.
which was a Christian service for an Atheist. Pretty poor taste, wouldn't you say?
Whether you would or would not have wanted to participate, you had a right to know about it. I was simply trying to protect myself from confrontation and disagreement,
while running away, like the coward you are, from an honest discussion about what our mother would have sanctioned, what would be meaningful for ALL of her children instead of just you, again exhibiting your cowardice and insecurity.
trying to take care of my own needs and committments
which seemed somehow to be more important than OUR needs? And committments??? What committments? You had committments to your mother and sisters during the past 5 years. You didn't seem to be doing much with THOSE committments! Suddenly, upon your mother's death (are you relieved, you evil daughter?) you have committments which you now need to uphold. They certainly weren't the committments you made to your sister about talking about how to memorialize our mother.
and in doing so lost sight of the needs of some others, you and ....(the good sister) particularly. I cannot change what I did or did not do,
No, you can't. Neither can you change the fact that when your mother needed you most you went on vacation, or that you ran away from responsibility ever since mom's stroke - maybe ever since Dad's death.
but I do want you to know that I realize I did you a great injustice and deeply regret it.
Well, at least maybe you have a little regret. You should probably just kill yourself for what you did. or did NOT do.
If I had it to do over again, I would certainly have been more forthcoming with you, have told you what I was doing
but apparently it wouldn't have stopped you from doing it again. You are pathetic.
- I am so sorry - I do love you and do not want to add to the pain I know you are experiencing. If you can find any way to forgive me, I ask that you do. If you cannot, I understand.
What do you understand? Do you understand your cruelty with what you did? Your neglect of your mother? Your avoidance of unpleasant aspects of care for her or the unpopular decisions that had to be made? Do you understand your cowardice? Do you understand that you represent all the things I find loathsome?
I only hope that someday, we might be friends again.
Oh, my god! WHY? Are you insane?
Love,
.....(the evil sister)
So of course I didn't respond to this drivel except to myself. Here is what I wrote - pretending that I'll send it but never will. What's the point? It would just be more pain. She wouldn't get it anyway, and I don't think she's worth the conversation that would ensue.
My pretend response:
Your letter was interesting for its rhetoric if not for its content.
The stated intention was to apologize not for holding a service and publicizing it to the public, but for attempting to deceive. It begs the question that if you hadn’t become aware that that attempt was unsuccessful, would you have made this apology?
There is a litany of grievances but they center around your treatment of your mother and peripherally, your sisters. You are probably well aware of the neglect and avoidances made and don’t need them stated.
The desire to be friends would be funny if it weren’t so pathetic.
You might ask yourself these questions:
Would you want to be friends with someone who does not do what she says she will do?
Would you want to be friends with someone who intentionally tries deceives you?
Would you want to be friends with someone who does not appear to be interested in you at all even to the extend of asking, simply ‘how are you?’, ‘how’s work?’, ‘how’s your health?’?
The real person to whom you should be apologizing can no longer hear you. Your disrespect and disregard of her care and finally of her last wishes is something that someone else will have to forgive.
Perhaps that is why you have now come to a belief in god. Now you have someone to forgive you.
Mom is gone
Find this place (see this blog) was written after mom's short stay in a nursing home after several falls at her assisted living apartment. She regained her strength enough to stand and get herself from the bed to the bathroom, but she had several more falls when she got back home, the last one on December 20th. This fall broke her femur and allowed the prosthesis which had acted as her hip to begin protruding from the break. Imagine the pain.
They kept her on pain meds for 5 days and transferred her to a hospital in the cities until they could figure out what they could do. Because of her advanced COPD (emphysema) any extended surgery would probably be un survivable for her. The decision was made to remove the prosthesis and leave her without a hip. Although this pretty much confined her to a wheelchair, the doctors assured us that she would be able to transfer from chair to bed, from chair to toilet, etc.
The surgery was done on Christmas day and was successful. She was transferred to a nursing home very close to the good sister and me. The added advantage of this nursing home was that our niece, one of her granddaughters was the charge RN on the floor where she was transferred.
She still had some re-hab to do and continued to be confused, but she always knew us. We'd go every day to read to her and visit and make sure they were taking care of her needs well. With our niece there it was double insurance that she was being well cared for and it was a very nice place, clean and kind personnel.
On January 16th, only a month after she got there, my niece called in the early morning to say that when the staff had gone in to get my mother up, she had appeared to have had a stroke (first one was 5 years ago in December - see this blog) that affected her left side and she was drooling a bit and was unresponsive. I was there in minutes and the good sister came soon after that. We spent the day and night with her as well as the next 4 days and nights. The rest of our family came and went and her sisters came and went, and finally after a long hard struggle for her she died on Tuesday, January 20th at 3:15 in the afternoon.
I don't know how some people are able to function after losing their parents. Maybe they don't attach themselves to the grief, or maybe they refuse to allow the grief to overtake them, but I and my sister have barely been able to function. This grief and sorrow has been exacerbated by my older (the evil) sister's deception in having a 'memorial service' for her without telling us. She put an announcement in the paper as if she thought we were illiterate or that our friends were. We had dozens of calls from friends asking us directions to the place or to say that they were looking forward to seeing us there - when we had to say 'we weren't invited - obviously not wanted'.
This event was planned by a sister who cared so much for our mother that she deigned to visit her for 15 minutes at intervals of anywhere from 1 week to 4 months. She did a Christian service for someone who expressly stated 'do not have a Christian service', who was an atheist and would have been appalled at such a a thing. She made it practically impossible for the good sister and me to hold the kind of service that our mother would have sanctioned and welcomed. We have both felt a great deal of paralysis over the past four months and we have yet to figure out how to plan a service for our mother that would be meaningful and comforting to us.
Big sigh. I don't know when we might figure this out. I will never speak to my older sister again, another casualty of this long, sad story.