quote:

Originally posted by 45 Cal:
I hope this works out well for you,I hate stories like this,brings up bad stuff in my younger years.
Families hurt us the most at times.

/\/\/\..indeed. For years I couldn't get a straight answer from any family member.

One reason why I joined the Army when fresh out of high school.

I read your whole story and I really feel for you and yours.
I'm not really fit to give any good advice but I'd just like to tell you that I wish you the best and am glad that you can talk to all the good folks here on the forum.

I have absolutely no basis to offer any meaningful advise with the single exception of the common theme from almost all the reply's.

Take care of your self and your family, they are, by far the most important factor in your life, bar none! Get help someplace to deal with this, professional, spiritual, friends, anywhere/anyone who can become a confidant. Just let it all out, you've already started by posting to your cyber friends here in SF. Keep it up...!

Be very very careful. There may be attempts to bait you in and make you the bad guy.
Please do not have any meetings or contact with this guy, unless absolutely necessary and an un biased person is present.
Remember this person is feeding off your distress and the distress of others. Desperately wanting to see you fail and brought down.

I'll definitely add some prayer your way. I think that reading thru the many replies the best advice I've read is taking care of you and your family first and if that may extend to your Mom, just do the best you can to help, keeping focus on your family foremost.

I am just dumbfounded at how crappy people can be- especially to innocents or to family that they are responsible for and supposed to take care of. Small, small people....

As I Dad myself, I agree with others- you have to protect your wife and child from it. Not sure how to protect your mom or if it would even "take" if you did.

I can't imagine. I don't know what to do but send you my best wishes and prayers.

Oh, Smudge. There are so many of us here feeling a whole lot of sympathy for your situation. Your description of the situation sounds like you really have a grip on the reality of it, and also understand that your Mom may not yet have that grip.
I do pray for insight and enlightenment for her so that she can get out of that impossible situation.
You have gotten a great deal of good advice and listening, understanding hearts who wish you the best.
Godspeed, my friend.

Mom and dad are probably codependents. You may have to back off and only allow written communication. You can't fix it. And, it is not your responsibility to.
Tough lesson

quote:

Originally posted by arcwelder:
He might one day have that set of grandparents, but really he doesn't right now, and it's best he not be exposed to the toxicity. There is only so much you can do and only so much energy you have. Don't waste it where it won't have any effect.

You're absolutely right about all of it except your very first point. I think, at best, he can expect to have a grandmother out of this. "Grandpa B" ain't happening. Part of the reason I wrote him off is that upon meeting his two year old grandson, he looked at him with what I can only describe as trepidation mixed with mild horror. I couldn't fathom it, he's a smart kid and he's not deformed or anything that should have evoked that reaction. It rang a lot of alarm bells in my head. I told a friend about it and he said "how would you feel about leaving your son alone with your father" and the instant terror that contemplating such a scenario evoked really drove it home for me.

But you're absolutely right about everything else. I am a son, but I am also now a husband and father, and that comes first, always. A man's job is to protect the family. My son is well-shielded from the toxicity, or at least, as best I can do for him. He knows his grandma is sick and I'm worried about her and that's all I've told him.



So, due to my father being completely checked out, not asking any questions and letting her pop 700mg worth of aspirin on the way from one hospital to the other, they arrived and were informed that such a move made the procedure dangerous and they couldn't do it. I just about slapped my glasses off my face, I was astonished at the level stupid blundering. I mean, she's in pain and doped up, so I get it, but to not say "yeah, I wouldn't take anything until we get there, they'll IV you something, just hang on" blows my mind. And due to the fantastically shitty medical care options living out in the middle of nowhere, my mother has to wait 30 days for the unit that does the ultrasonic stone smashing. It was on loan from another hospital. So now she gets to deal with this for a month.

I haven't talked to her on the phone yet, but we've been texting back and forth and I told her that she needs to make some decisions about her health and well being. I'll talk to her about it on the phone and simply state that I've been working very hard this last year on making positive gains in my life, and that her staying under my father's influence is another way for him to pipeline his toxicity into his children's lives via his neglect of her, and that at some point, something will have to change. One way or the other. It has to be that way.

I appreciate all the replies, even the folks who don't know what to say. I know I never seem to run short of words, but I've had people drop heavier stories on me and was simply dumbfounded. I appreciate the vote of confidence anyhow. Thank you all.

I wish I had words of comfort or good advice. Protect your son and wife. God bless her for blocking that call on Christmas.

He sounds like a classic narcissist. Im very sorry about that, but it sounds like you have built a wonderful life for yourself. Don’t let him horn in and shit on it.
Take care.

P220 Smudge -

You said you are close with your mother. I don't know what a divorce consultation costs, but if it's doable without financial stress to your family or your sister's, and your mom is willing to be there, then, before giving up on the entire lot, I would offer that as my final Hail Mary.

If your mom won't participate in the consultation, then I say forget it. If she does participate but then doesn't follow the advice, I'd again say forget about it, as others have said.

I would do this last step just so I would know I did what I could.

I wish you the best.

quote:

Originally posted by irreverent:
He sounds like a classic narcissist.

I've been doing a lot of reading on it the last few years, and almost every last point is "yup, that's the old man right there."

Mikey, I agree. I'm willing to help her make the steps, but she's got to be willing to take them. If she isn't, that's her decision, but it will have ramifications. I can only inform her what they will be as far as I'm concerned.

We had a long text exchange and she's resting now.
I simply asked her to consider the possibility that neglecting to care for her was the only method left that he had to continue funneling toxicity and undue stress into his children's lives. That we love and care about her and not him probably galls him to no end, so she gets the shit end of the stick on this deal only as long as she's willing to keep getting smacked with it. As long as she stay with him, she's under his sphere of influence, and it will continue to trickle down to us. She didn't want to be excluded, but the bottom line is it's decision time. Does she choose team "It's MA'AM!" or does she choose her progeny? Because "It's MA'AM!" is solidly and 1,00% on their own team and doesn't care about anyone else.


She said my sister and my grandmother basically told her all the same things I had and that she was mentally and emotionally exhausted for the day and we'll talk tomorrow. I told her I wasn't trying to dogpile, but that we all love her and are extremely concerned. I wished her peaceful rest and to at least give me an update tomorrow, even if she didn't feel like talking.

The most I can offer is sympathy and prayers.

Applying logic and good sense to an emotional problem is a challenge that I doubt anyone overcomes without a lot of second-guessing. So, my only advice would be to protect the nuclear family first, help your mother as you can, and don't doubt your decisions.

Smudge, that’s a powerful raw deal for all, but especially you and your mom. Of course you both have my prayers my friend.

Let’s suppose you go to Montreal and bring her home. How do you deal with immigration?

I read your whole post. Not only are you verbose but you like to string together lots of words and thoughts that all together don’t make too much sense.

Having said that, I understand all these things are in your mind churning all at the same time.

You have to take this on like you would an elephant sandwich- one bite at a time. But you also need to unravel the separate threads so that you deal with it one at a time. Yes, they’re all connected but just like several wrong things can affect each other in a car, you still have to fix it one thing at a time.

Best of luck.

There was about 37 year's worth of stuff to work through and I just had to try to get it all out, and I focused on trying to do so in bite-sized pieces. It was never going to be my best writing.

It's an absolute tangled mess, as as you say. I appreciate the replies.

Oh, and to clarify, my parents are just on the US side of the border from Cornwall, southwest of Montreal. When I tell people "upstate New York," they often say "oh, Albany or Syracuse?" That's mid-state. Everything North of NYC is upstate to the people living at the southernmost point of the state. It's verbal shorthand. It's actually a lot longer drive than 20 minutes, but the point is, they're living at the northernmost tip of New York.

I've not read all the comments. I'm sure you're in a tough situation.

My suggestion is to ask your mom what she wants to do and just let her know that financial and emotional resources are available to make just about anything happen.

You can control how much you interact with your dad (her husband). She has to make the decision on what she wants to do.
Your insurance probably includes a limited amount of counseling for stress related issues. It probably wouldn't hurt to talk with a trained counselor. (don't phrase it as family counseling - it's counseling to deal with stress that you're experiencing)

I did see your post about access to the machine to break down the stone. How far would she need to travel to get to a city where they have the device? Is that an option?



Is there anything else we can do to help you?

quote:

Originally posted by SR:
Is that an option?

Probably not, for so many reasons, but she's looking into it.

quote:

Originally posted by SR:
Is there anything else we can do to help you?

Prayers for my mother and for me to have a place to vent is probably as good as it gets about now.

Actually, there is one thing. If someone knows a good divorce lawyer in either Canton/Potsdam, Plattsburgh, Saranac Lake NY, or any point in between, I'd appreciate an email to the address in my profile.

I talked to my mother a few hours ago. They had an epic fight last night about him making himself the woe-is-me victim out of all of this after he guilt-tripped her about using him "as [her] personal chauffer/taxi driver," then another big blowup this morning where he told her to go get her "own fucking groceries" for the restricted diet they put her on, and then again when she came home and carried in and put away her "own fucking groceries" and he remarked "I wonder what a taxi for all the driving I've had to do for you the last few days would have cost." She told him "I can't do this anymore." He offered to have someone appraise the house and cut a check for half and that she could just leave.

I quoted this meme:


Sounds like someone is starting to realize they're making the last in a long string of mistakes and wants to bully and bluster, and it's not working anymore. So, when she's feeling a bit better, she'll be talking to a lawyer. She says she's done. We will see. I didn't want to push her about it in her condition. I did mention that I could hear her wheezing through the phone and she said "yeah well, the house has a haze of cigarette smoke and it's too cold to air it out." Quit 15 years and wheezing from secondhand smoke. Ugh.

I'm 50/50 between asking if site staff would be so gracious as to memory hole this thread, and keeping this dumpster fire open just to have a place to talk about it, even though everything anyone could reasonably expect to tell me about it has already been said.

I'm hoping for the best for you and your Mom. Though not nearly as bad, I have traveled some of those same roads.