Reading Nora's blog brought to mind my quasi mother in law who is nearly universally scorned by her children.
She abandoned four kids, including my favorite brother in law who was an infant at the time, for the high life - literally. Drugs trumped kids. Sad.
She came around only occasionally while the kids were growing up. My husband estimates that after she took off (he was around four) he saw her maybe three times tops between then and the time he was around 23.
Since THAT visit, we have seen her one time and that was this past Thanksgiving. My husband will be 26 in May.
My husband's older brother swings to the extreme side of the scorn, preferring to have nothing to do with her at all. His older sister however, has let her mom move in with her a number of times. After the last time though, when "Grandma" took off one day never to return or call, her husband told her NO MORE. I think Bob is in the middle somewhere, swinging back and forth - sometimes within minutes - between totally not caring about her at all and totally wanting her to love him like a "real mom". It's very sad.
For this last visit, my mother in law stayed at the house of my husband's younger brother and a few days into the visit, he was asking when she could come stay with us. Uh, never comes to mind. I guess he remembered that he knows her the least of any of her kids. They are barely acquainted with one another at all. Save the genetic link, there's nothing there.
At Thanksgiving, everything was pleasant. MIL was here, and friction was at a minimum, though I didn't really chat with her. My husband mostly avoided her as well, preferring instead to tend to a small fire outside and drink Crown Royal, Jim Beam and pretty much clear out the liquor cabinet.
He got very drunk.
After everyone left, we talked about his mom's visit - well as much as you can talk with a very drunk person.
It was very personal and very sad, and details will be omitted here. After that Thanksgiving visit, his mom was in town for about another week and a half but we did not see her again.
I assured my husband that even though he didn't have his own actual mom, that he DID have A mom - MY mom. My mom probably likes HIM more than she likes ME, at least, at times.
And that whole exchange reminded me of my sweet husband telling me over the summer after my dad passed away unexpectedly that I still had HIS dad. My back-up dad. Which I thought was very sweet and totally true.
So between us, we have one unmatched set of parents - a biker dad with long hair and a professional education administrator mom with short hair.
But somehow, it works for us.
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4 comments:
That's a touching story.
Gosh, that's so sad.
In our case, I wouldn't say she is universally scorned, but we're just not close. There's no bond there and our visits are always a chore done out of obligation.
She's done a lot of crazy sh*t over the years and most of it wasn't entirely her fault, but doesn't matter cause we had to endure it and it wasn't fun. I could blog for weeks on some of the crazy stuff she's done.
Remember when you wrote about that crazy mom who threw her kids off the pier and I told you I had a personal story I could share? It would have been about my mom. She's the looney one.
She's been a paranoid schizoprenic since I was about 10-? She's fine now because she's medicated in the nursing home, but damn if she hasn't made our lives a living hell in the past.
By just looking at her though you wouldn't believe she belongs in a nursing home; she totally ambulatory, acts sane, the whole bit. Her biggest problem was the noncompliance with meds.
Right before we had her admitted she totally stopped eating and drinking anything, even water. I hadn't seen her in about six months b/c she lived in Corpus Christi and I lived in Houston (3-1/2 hours away) but when I did see her I was totally shocked at her appearance. She'd lost a bunch of weight, hadn't showered in who knows how long, and rambled on about people trying to poison her, etc. My aunt was looking out for her but she didn't even trust her and half the time wouldn't open the front door for her.
If you're interested, I blogged about it in January. I'd leave the link, but don't know how to, but you can find it as my January 8th entry. I had written about Andrea Yates, the woman who drowned her kids.
Thanks for sharing. I'm sorry your husband had to go through that, but I do find some comfort in knowing I'm not the only one who had it rough.
Sorry to write a book on your blog!
Oh god, don't worry about writing a book on my blog, I almost wrote one on yours!
It's sad when people don't know how to take care of themselves or their kids, or just refuse to.
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