I found it confusing, too, and read it the same way as Carol. Narratively and structurally, “Ray” seemed to refer to the 2nd husband. After introducing him, you described both of the kids’ issues, so it’s bit weird to suddenly use one cousin’s name (without specifying whose name it was) but not the other. But the really confusing part was this:
You used two different antecedents for “them” in the same sentence without any indication that it suddenly switched. Also, there’s one singular noun immediately followed by a singular name, which makes it appear that Ray is the stepfather.
This (from a later post) is similarly confusing, grammatically:
Hah no, I’m still confused. Is this it? –
*My aunt - I’ll call her “Beth” - got married in order to escape her parents.
Beth had two children, a boy and a girl (my cousins Ray and Janet). Beth and her husband eventually separated and divorced; her husband resisted both steps just to hurt her.
Following the divorce, Beth spent some time engaging in hookups and then several years in a relationship as “the other woman”. She broke that up when her married boyfriend started doing cocaine. Eventually she met a new boyfriend “Steve,” who told her, “I want you, but I have no interest in your children”.
Beth and Steve got married, and Beth left her kids in the tender care of the same parents she’d fled. Both Ray and Janet are pretty fucked up. Janet has developed the family’s ability to ignore what’s in front of her nose to uncanny levels. Ray eventually matured [unless “got fixed” means a vasectomy, but I take it that’s not what you meant]. But it took things like a short stint in jail that woke him up and made him grow about 15 years in a month. Neither Ray or Janet ever had a personal relationship with Steve, even though Ray moved in with Beth and Steve… 25 years ago? Yeah, 25, and lived with or near them for 20 years.
Beth and Steve were together for almost 30 years, until his death. I don’t think either of them was/is a particularly nice person, but apparently they happened to be right for each other.*
You did good. My own mother’s death bears some resemblance to the paragraphs above, though the nature of her passing, and my childhood story, were extremely different. Towards the end, she needed a lot from me and it was excruciating hard for me to play the dutiful daughter. I felt mostly relief when she died.
But I said much what you did - “I don’t love her as a mother, but she’s a suffering old lady and I am the only person in the world who can help her. [I was an only child]. How can I turn away from her when I can make her life better - I would help a suffering stranger in need, if for some reason I had that much power to do things to make things better for them.”
Anyway, I can sleep at night knowing I did the right thing even though it was VERY hard (and more than just emotionally hard; some of the logistics were hard and actually very scary in terms of possible consequences if things went wrong.). Also, my son saw his mother “man up”, as it were, and do what I believed was right despite how hard it was. I’m happy knowing I set a good example for him.
I have a friend who estranged himself from his very dysfunctional family; I know enough details about why that I fully support his decision. When crisis erupted, he did NOT go back, he stayed away. That decision is completely defensible, and he knows he did the only thing he could to preserve his own well-being. But, he second guesses himself a lot, and will feel some doubt and guilt for the rest of his life.
So yeah … you did good. For your mother, for your own happy family, and for yourself.
My aunt, I’ll call her Beth since you guys like it, married Raymond in order to escape her abusive parents.
Eventually, after Raymond turned out to be an abusive git, they separated and divorced, both at her request and with him fighting every step just because.
Following the divorce, Beth spent some time engaging in hookups and then several years in a relationship as “the other woman”. She broke that up when her married boyfriend started doing cocaine, not because she had anything against cocaine per se, but because she couldn’t follow his rythm. Eventually she met Steve, who told her, “I want you, but I have no interest in your children”.
She moved to another town with Steve, leaving her children Beth II and Ray in the care of the same (grand)parents she’d married Raymond to escape. The children stayed in Beth’s house, close to their grandparents.
Both children dropped out of school, but Beth II got a job and Ray (who had enough psychological problems for a few doctoral thesis) didn’t. Ray moved in with Beth and Steve.
Beth II has developed the family’s ability to not see what’s in front of her nose to very high levels. Ray refused to read or write starting in primary school, but this never got properly adressed because any attempt on the schools’ part to do so met a barrier of “that’s just the way he is”; after years of watching his parents scream and throw objects at each other, followed by years of hearing “you’re just like your father”, plus the abuse from the grandparents, then moving back in with a mother who did not want him and a mother’s-common-law-husband who wanted him even less, his self-esteem wasn’t just low, it was in negative values. Eventually he got caught selling drugs; the lawyer and judge figured that if they let him go with a slap, he wouldn’t learn anything, so instead they used a scheme that had him sleeping at his mother’s and spending days in prison. The experience scared him so much that he not only found his ability to read and write but managed to discover who he really was, retrieve his previously-non-existant self-esteem, and not only get a job but get progressively better jobs. His house is fully paid, his car is fully paid, and he’s worked at the same place for the last ten years: not bad for a guy who fifteen years ago could not get a job as a store shelver because he refused to fill the form asking for his name, phone and address.
Beth and Steve were together for almost 30 years, until his death. I don’t think either of them was/is a particularly nice person, but apparently they happened to be right for each other.
I think I understand now, but did you really have to go with “Beth” and “Beth II” and “Ray” and “Raymond”? I know it’s to show that Beth II and Ray are the offspring of Beth and Raymond, but it actually makes things harder, not easier, to follow.
Your determination to obscure your story leaves me no choice but to fling a powerful curse at you: May your 2nd cousin’s half-brother’s wife give them poisoned pancakes after she steps on his left foot and your in-laws aren’t at the hospital when your other cousin suffers the consequences of what they did to him after talking to her.