Dear Grandma.... fuck off !!!

The BBQ Pit
21

Truer have never been spoken elbows. That is exactly correct. The bad news that you can’t do anything to change their behavior. The great news is that you are a generation removed from it and you have full control over your own actions and reactions.

To the people asking why the OP doesn’t help mother more to deal with an abusive grandmother directly, that just is just flat-out bullshit that just perpetuates the problem. Do whatever you think is best best course of action in term but don’t fall for this time honored ploy yourself. Draw your own lines and stand by them. People will respect those lines and you for standing strong on them.

22

It sounds like you’re trying to pick your battles, and that’s the healthiest thing you can do short of cutting yourself out of the picture completely. I hope your mom continues to let you take her to the doctor and I hope she’s not as sick as she sounds. Does your grandma call your mom on a cell phone? Any chance you can get hold of your mom’s cell for a few minutes and block grandma’s number while she’s not looking?

I had a toxic family member. One of my uncles. He was a real pain, even all the way from Florida. He used to make a one-shot drive from there to Chicago twice a year, stopping only for gas on the way here and back, with a 2 to 3 week stay in between. He was too cheap to bother one overnight hotel stay and certainly too cheap to give any family a break while here and do a hotel for a few nights here and there. Someone had to put him up for the entire stay.

That’s just one thing about him. One year, I thought, one of these trips he’s going to go off the road in the middle of the night and good riddance. Well, it didn’t exactly happen that way, instead a semi from the opposite direction crossed the wide grass meridian in the middle of the night, caught air on the way back up the wrong side, and landed on my uncle’s car. Police think he never even saw it coming and based on the remains it was quick and as merciful as it can get when a semi cab lands on you. I didn’t wish horrible pain or anything on him, just to be gone, and it sounds like that’s what happened.

Some people seem to assume just because they’re family that the others in the family have to put up with them. I don’t agree with that at all. Be nice to people, or it will come back to bite you in ways you won’t expect. My grandma wasn’t the awesomest, while she wasn’t a complete troll like yours, she was hard to take care of and even with 6 of 10 kids still living during her last couple years, she had to go to a home. I’m an only child and plan to have my mom live with me until the end if I can, with in-home care if/as needed. The difference is, not only do I love my mom, I like her too. That makes all the difference.

23

My mom is nothing like my grandmother thankfully. She’s awesome. She’s a very proud, humble, independent woman who raised my sister and I without any assistance at all from my father while working retail. For about three years I remember she worked seven days a week at one point to make ends meet. My mom is so awesome I told her if she wanted to live with me in her golden years so she doesn’t have to worry about finances in her retirement she can live with me if she wanted to. She’s no burden at all. She’s just stuck under a witches spell.

I’m under no illusions of changing my grandmother being they age she is, I’ve resinged myself to that fact. I have a very low tolerance for her BS. I’ll admit I thought initially I could neutrally reason with my mother and hope she would see the light, and why it wasn’t healthy for her to jump through all these hoops grams was asking her to jump through. She does find it frustrating and exhausting as she would vent about it to me over the phone. But then I realized as insane as the whole thing was she was stuck under my grams thumb, and didn’t really heed any of my advice no matter how calm and reasoned it came across. She just needed someone to vent to about it and wasn’t looking for solutions, I realized this eventually. Now I just listen, bite my lip and just agree with her and offer to help with driving her around if she needs it.

But my level of rage towards grans has shot up a few notches now that my mom isn’t well . When I’ve both let them know they can call me if the need something or need help. I can understand why grams doesn’t call me. The only reason why my mom isn’t calling me is like you said trying to spare me the freak show I’d have to deal with. But I’ve discussed this with mom, and told her I whatever I’d do for grams really I was doing it for her, not grams. I’ve also told her on many occasions she is nothing like grams. So I have a hard time trying to understand why she doesn’t take my offers for help more often.

I hope she does but to be honest I’m worried because I know there maybe be a couple of tests involved which I’m sure which may require repeated visits . If I can talk to the doctor before hand I’ll express my concerns regarding her lack of interest when it comes to taking care of herself. She doesn’t know she’s going to the doctors yet, I have to trap her into it unfortunately.

Mom doesn’t have a cell. Grams calls her at home directly.

24

It might not be BS, but IBS. I can eat certain brands of some foods, but not other brands. For that matter, I might be able to eat certain subcategories of certain foods, but not other kinds. I might be able to eat chicken and rice, but not chicken and wild rice, both made by Campbell, because the ingredients are different. However, if I’ve made up a shopping list, I always specify the brand and the kind. So on this issue, she might have a legitimate reason for wanting certain brands. That’s why there ARE different brands, after all, because they are not really identical.

And shopping every other day is for the birds, unless it’s really convenient to shop that often. When I lived in Spain, the first floor of the apartment building was a grocery store, so it was easy to pick up a fresh loaf of bread each day, along with whatever vegetables we wanted. It was simply a matter of riding the elevator for a couple of minutes.

25

Each time I see posts like the OP, I realize just how much of an effect my upbringing really does have on me in some areas.

The rest of my family has seen me break from nearly every thing we were as a family…Christianity, church, ideas about politics, child rearing, just about all the things I was raised with, I ended up going my own way later on.

But the way we treat our elders is BURNED into my brain, for better or for worse.

The only ‘toxic family member’ my family has ever decided didn’t deserve our acknowledgment, let alone our respect, was a uncle who physically abused his children and wife until they finally left him.

Every other elder in our family were to be catered to as much as we could stand it, and anything over the line of what we thought was reasonable could be denied, but still only with the utmost respect.

For instance, when it became clear that a cousin was being leaned on quite unfairly when our great aunt was sick, that cousin finally stuck up for herself by calling a family meeting and tearfully announcing that someone else would have to step in because she couldn’t do it anymore. This came with lots of apologies and tears.

I am not judging the OP. I am really amazed at the story. The idea of talking back to my 90 year old grandma with any amount of smartassness in my voice…oh my god. No. Nope.

My grandma didn’t make it to 90, but even in her 70s, if she wanted ice cream, she got it. And if it wasn’t the right kind, we better make it the right kind.

Some of great aunts were so mean, wooo, boy they were mean. You did what they said, or you got an epic ripping into. Maybe it was different for us because most of us had grandparents and great grandparents who grew up poor in the south at a time when blacks had to make many sacrifices in order to raise a family, and we all felt we owed a debt to our elders. But the idea of responding to my grandma the way the OP talks about his grandma…I can’t even picture that shit.
If I were in the OP’s shoes, I would be doing everything I can to help grams out. Then, if there were things she needed that I felt were just unreasonable, I would be wracking my brain trying to find the most sweet, humble and respectful way to tell her the limits of where I can go.

Again, I am NOT judging the OP. I am merely expressing my shock at how much my own ideas about cranky grannies differ from his.

26

Given everything else you posted in this thread, I’d’ve tought it would be: “No Christmas trip for you this year, ya old bag.”

And, yes, there are certain people who it’s absolutely a bad idea to have anything whatsoever to do with once you reach the age of majority yourself and can decide to hell with them. It doesn’t matter if you’re related to them or not. They’re unbearable. And, as an adult, you get to choose to let them inflict more suffering on you or to write them off.

27

Nzinga, cranky is one thing - the OP’s granny goes beyond that. My grandma pouts about her daughters having worse health than she does “how can I expect them to care for me, when they take more pills than I do and are weaker than I am? The world is upside down!” - the OP’s grandma expects people who take more pills than she does and are weaker than she is to take care of her. That just ain’t right.

28

Facts of life:

  1. There are utterly shitty people in the world.
  2. Someone is related to them and they have to deal with an utterly shitty person instead of a normal, nice, loving grandma.

Being related to grandma does not mean grandma is a nice person or deserving of respect. Grandma can be abusive, thankless, picky, intolerant, demanding, and joyless. Grandma can shit on everything you do for her. Being nice to Grandma doesn’t necessarily make things any better.

Toxic people deserve the following: Good-bye, and have a nice life.

29

Holy crap, that’s how much cremation costs? I had no idea.

Note to self – update will instructions. I still want to be scattered over the shore from a plane, but we’ll have to skip the cremation step.

30

Sometimes I really envy those people out there that have wonderful family members, with only small disagreements, and that support them and want them to succeed. And you want to see them. And you don’t cringe a little every time the phone rings.

You guys, consider yourselves lucky that you have no real idea what the rest of us feel like. :frowning:

31

Use a blender, it’s more festive.

32

It was such a good line my browser posted it twice.

33

That’s what the propellor is for.

34

Good luck. Your Mom deserves to feel better. The only thing I can think to add is maybe you can tell her that it might be something simple, like needing to take iron pills. And she wouldn’t want to put off something that was a simple fix like that.

Yeah. I know she’s afraid that it isn’t something simple. But until you check, it might be.

You can get it for half that if you don’t bury the ashes or get a fancy urn. At least sometimes you can. Or could in 2008. (Aunt with veteran’s benefits through her husband. No cost for the plot, slight internment fee.)

35

Just did this for my father last month – the least expensive of the cremation fees with the little black plastic box for ashes - $1565.78. He was also a veteran, so that is reflected in the cost of cremation. We will be scattering the ashes ourselves (hence the little plastic box).

36

You should be nice to your grandma. Go sing her a song.

37

It doesn’t cost much to rent a wood chipper. :slight_smile:

38

#2 is incorrect. It should be: Those shitty people have to deal with the consequences of how they treated their relatives.

That’s the consequence of the correct rendition of #2. :smiley:

39

I was more thinking King Diamond.