For those of you unfamiliar, we found out last thursday that my wife’s Mom died. We didn’t know many details, and had some wrong. After a day or two of research, the truth finally emerges.
She never made it to a nursing home. She started having pain after 20 minutes of kidney dialysis and they’d have to stop. She started deteriorating. They finally got through to Gene (wife’s Step Dad, Sexual Molester), that things were not getting better. He finally made the decision that next time something bad happened, not to take drastic measures. She finally caught a pseudomonis and staph superinfection, and they couldn’t have fought it even if they’d been allowed. She died in the hospital August 3rd, 4:05pm, having been in a coma since April for renal failure.
Gene had been keeping in touch with the one person in the family who could stand him; a Great Aunt of my Wife’s who he’d been drinking buddies with. He’d never gotten back in touch with them, and they hadn’t heard anything else. I had to be the one to tell them she’d died. I talked to Margret, Mrs. Zero’s cousin and family gossip and told her. She was stunned. Gene had MIL* creamated, against everyone’s wishes. There was no funeral, which is a grand, great social gaffe in that side of the family. He’s even too cheap to pay for burial himself. He’s trying to get the city to pick up the tab for that.
Well, my wife feels better now. It’s over, for her. We will move on now.
*Mother In Law, the only time I’ve ever called her that. Curious…
I guess not knowing the entire story, I feel sorry for your wife, that she didn’t get to say goodbye. I’m not sure of the relationship that was there, but I would think it would be hard to put closure on her mother’s death without that last goodbye. We talk about our parents, we criticize, we condemn, and yes sometimes it’s true these people deserve it. But being a parent is the hardest job in the world. We can’t always make the path we would like to when bringing up our children. We give them too much and we’re doing bad because we aren’t making them earn their way and teaching them appreciation, if we give them too little then we are neglecting them. Sometimes you feel like it’s a losing battle. Ya know it would have been so much easier if God had given us instruction guides on how to be parents.
FWIW, it sounds like your wife’s step-dad is the family outsider, and I feel deeply sorry for him. Also for your wife, too. Was this all in a different town, far away? She knew her mom was in a coma, right? Or was that a total surprise, too?
Yes, he was the family outsider, and with good reason:
1: Once my mother met him, I ceased to exist. I was raised most of my life by her parents. They were the best parents I could have ever asked for.
2: They took advantage of my grandparents. I had to sue her for power of attorney for my grandfather after they took his checkbook and his credit card and used them for themselves. They charged the limit on his credit card for cigarettes and beer when my grandpa didn’t drink and was on an oxygen tank. When I came home, I found all kinds of checks under the mattress for liquor stores. It took me three months to get his bank overdrafts straightened out. I am glad I took over and took care of my grandpa, because he was always there for me. But I left college after three years to do so. I have never finished, and now probably never will.
3: He tried to rape me when I was 12. My mother didn’t believe me. My grandparents did. And so did everyone else in the family.
Yes, I knew she was in a coma. I didn’t go. I have family here that needed taking care of (I was 600 miles away) and it would have caused more harm than good if I had gone.
I’m glad she’s gone. She’s not suffering anymore, at least on a physical level. I wish she would have remembered she had a daughter, though. I gave her so many chances: I couldn’t do it anymore. And I don’t regret that. I get jealous when my cousin talks about memories she has of my mother playing with her when she was a little girl. Those should have been my memories, not hers.
I don’t hate anybody, but he is the one person I have come closest to hating in my entire life. All I wanted was for her to be my mother. It didn’t happen. She made her choice. May God have mercy on both their souls.
I’m so sorry for your pain, past and immediate. Fiction is far superior to real life in supplying resolution to baggage from the past before death. What was, was. All anyone can do is forgive and go on.
