What I write here is not intended to evoke sympathy or solicit advice, but is simply born of a need to relate these events to someone unrelated to me.
My sister is, and always has been, an ass. She has a long history of poor behavior with which I won’t burden everyone. She has three children: two boys, 11 and 3, and a girl, 2. All have different fathers. She is not married to any of the fathers, and is divorced from her daughter’s father, for reasons which are primarily her fault.
Her oldest, Donnie, she got custody of after volunatarily relinquishing it a few years ago. She pulled a disappearing act for several weeks with some guy noone in my family knew (who also happens to be the father of her second child), and gave Donnie to his father. So, after a bitter court battle, she got back custody. Her other son, she never even told the father about. Legally, he has none.
A month ago, I got a call from my father. My sister was being held in jail in Niagara Falls. She was picked up driving erratically by U.S. Customs and turned over the the N.F.P.D. With her in the car were some 20-year-old she met on the Internet (my sister is 33), and some other guy. Nobody in the family knows either of these two. One of the two had a handgun on him, and my sister had about an ounce of a “controlled substance” (I don’t know what) in her purse. Also with her were all three of her children.
The last month has been a rollercoaster as my sister travels back and forth to Niagara Falls for court dates and hearings. The kids all went home with my mother. She and her boyfriend both work full-time and have neither the resources nor the space to keep them. My sister has been in contact with my father, and keeps telling him she’s going to get it together and get a job and go get the kids. In fact, she told him Tuesday she was going over to get them.
Fact is, she hasn’t seen the kids in three weeks. My mother can’t keep them, financially or legally, so she called their fathers. Donnie is going with his father, who is mentally abusive and the worst kind of stereotyped small-town redneck you can imagine. Sydney will go with her father. But Evan has nobody–he’s left holding the bag. He feels like his mother doesn’t want him, and the only father-figure he’s ever known isn’t legally obligated to, and has no intention of, taking him.
These are all bright kids, smart and fun, and my sister is resentful of them, even though they are the result of her decisisions. She refuses to take responsibility, and now these kids are all going to be split up and possibly never see each other, or their mother, again. She is simply on the road to jail or death.
Everyone in the family feels so powerless and angry. My father is trying to be tough but compassionate, but it’s really killing him. The fact is, she’s a pathological liar, and she’s a user (in every sense of the word). It’s like the old joke about politicians–you can tell she’s lying when her lips are moving. My mother can’t seem to dredge up ANY compassion, despite the fact that it’s HER treatment of my sister of the years that has helped make her the way she is. I feel so left out of it, because I am not in contact with my mother and there’s nothing I can do.
I wish she would come to her senses, and stop trying to destroy these children and herself.
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