Legacy of abuse

"Why is grandma upset?"

I told my daughter that my mother-in-law has been worried about a lot of things lately, and that sometimes it's just too many things at once, and makes for a pretty cruddy time emotionally.

She's a bit too old for that answer, and pressed for details. The truth, though, is rough. How to tell it without the reality being too overwhelming?

My mother-in-law told me this past weekend that I am more a daughter to her than any of hers ever were. It is not, for her, some sort of idle gooey praise. It is a strong statement, one that she felt necessary to follow up with the caveat that no one else in the family can know she feels that way, because it will cause a scene.

It was bittersweet. Touching but ultimately horrifying. At 70, she's been walking on the same eggshells almost all of her life.

"Well, grandma has been worried about grandpa's health, for one. She is also sad about our plans to move and all the pressures of retirement decisions and people pulling her this way and that. You know how things can build up when you are under stress like that? It doesn't take much to upset a person under those conditions."

My daughter understood, then asked if was her aunt that upset grandma.

Health? My father-in-law, stepfather to my spouse and his siblings, got the pathology report back today that confirms cancer.

Retirement? They are 70, and both still work because they can't afford retirement. Having two middle-aged kids who never grew up, and take advantage of her all the time doesn't help.

Moving? We need to do it for our son. We have recently learned the prognosis for his disability, and it means making adjustments. We can improve his ability to be independent by moving to a more accessibility-friendly area, but cannot afford areas like that anywhere around here. We have been trying to encourage my in-laws to follow, or at least move somewhere, almost anywhere, and retire. They own their home, and can buy a similar one in better shape and in a better area for half of what they'd get for this one. This has been our mantra for years. You can afford to stop working, but you'd have to leave the area.

Our pleas are different from some of the other siblings. One wanted them to sell and use all the money for a down payment on a house for him, where they could then live in an attached apartment of sorts. They saw it as the pitch for his upward mobility at their expense that it was. Now he wants them to sell and move to a more expensive area where he wants to get a new job, because then he'd have a free place to stay during the transition. Another, the aunt, wonders why her mom is talking of moving at all, and peppers me with questions on why we would possibly want to move. I can tell she is trying to talk us out of leaving, because she fears that her favorite person to abuse might actually follow and therefore won't be nearby any more for her to shit on. A third would just have to find someone else to live off of, that is if he doesn't get jail time at his court hearing tomorrow.

Still, our talk is just as much pressure as anyone else's.

My daughter was right on the money when she guessed that her aunt did something to upset her grandmother. It was classic verbal abuse.

"As a matter of fact, yes, it was your aunt that upset grandma." My daughter was mad. This aunt extends her bahavior beyond her immediate family more than anyone. While the incidents have been tamer, they still cross lines and are blantantly direspectful.

I never wanted my feelings about others to influence my kids relationships with them. If their relationships were good, I didn't see reason to possibly influence that by sharing others bad relationships with them. I wanted them to form the relationships freely. But this aunt crossed some lines with her, not abuse, but control-issue behavior. So I've shared with my daughter, if only to assure her that it's not about her, it's about the other person. Not a tell-all, but enough so that she knows she's not alone.

But now this wasn't about her relationship with her, or mine, but her grandmother's. I said it. "You're aunt is abusive."

"What does abusive mean?" she asked.

Honestly? It means that she has physically threatened the 5'1" 70 year-old, and verbally abuses her all the time, mostly without other witnesses. She steals from her and berates her. Her and her brother, the worst of the kids, are very much like their father, continuing the abuse that she endured with him for several years.

Their father? Alcoholic. Verbal, emotional, and physical abuser. Womanizer. Bullshit artist. Rapist.

And even before that, their grandmother grew up in a home where her own siblings were abusive to their father, where she was not believed and everything always centered around how it made her mother emotionally distraught.

A viral cycle. It's so complicated.

I sugar-coated as much as possible. The truth is important, but so is context, and ability to understand. Most of my response was explaining that part of it. Then I told her that her aunt yelled at grandma, and that it's a pattern that has gone on for a while. That it did not even start with her aunt. That sometimes, it seems, kids turn out very much like, or very much unlike, their parents. Her aunt and uncle turned out a lot like their own father. Her dad (the oldest of six), is the opposite, and can actually be almost too sensitive to anything that is like his father in any way.

I want my kids to have access to knowledge and information, so that they can make the best decisions for themselves. How much easier it would be if I could tell them about things without it being tied to people they love.

With thanks to biting beaver, whose post last week came at the right time for me. It gave me a bit more resolve in dealing with things this weekend, and the encouragement to even begin to write about this now.