She's still alive but in her mid nineties so I worry every time the phone rings with a certain prefix. I'll try to shorthand my situation: I was the scapegoat of the children with my older siblings her golden children, especially my sister who looks like her (unlike me) and was a housewife and mother (unlike me - in large part due to my mother sabotaging my efforts to do the same).
I was also the person who did everything for my mother starting in youth (she used me as her human shield against my father's blows.
I was her emotional support starting at age 12 when my father left to be with his mistress - my mother shared the gory details only with me making sure to threaten me with going to live with them if I wasn't there for her as she wanted.
I alone helped her with all (funeral etc) when my father died when I was 19, I helped her financially and generously - over helping myself and even as I was poor - over my lifetime.
I abandoned my life whenever she was dumped as the golden children got their lives together on holidays, her birthday, her surgery aftercare, and lastly her downsizing. (You can read some horrible tales when I did the two years of that.).
She was never there for me in any of my life travails, including hospitalizations, etc.
After all that when I, thanks to this forum and the internet teaching me to live my life, refused to be her free slave/caretaker any longer at age 62, she disinherited me from her will and removed me from being her executor etc. She didn't tell me these things though I suspected them from my sister's actions. When I asked both of them, they lied to me. I finally turned to her lawyer (an evil pig she paid to redo her will 6 times in a few years whenever things didn't go as she wanted), who emailed back with only: " you have no more responsibilities."
This spring my sister and her husband (multimillionaires many times over and greedy pigs) put the down payment on a condo in D.C. where they live. Then they moved my 94 year old mother who uses a walker for everything into it having her pay the mortgage payment and the $1,100 a month HOA to cover the pool, tennis court and gym my brother in law uses. My mother is fine with this, while she spent years guilting me for any small thing she did or gave me - which were rare to put it mildly. My mother is entirely dependent on them as she cannot go anywhere. They're not the caretaking types and use their wealth to have her food delivered. But my mother is in heaven as she's by her darlings now.
I made a final try to end our relationship on a good note, but have been met with a continuation of the emails she's sent me for years accusing me falsely of horrible things and putting me down.
My life is a bit of a shambles from all and I have health and financial concerns.
So if you survived reading all this - go or not go when she dies, assuming she predeceases me, which is not a given? (Sorry for any typos, I can't bear to proof read this, hence my thanks if you suffered through it.)
You know what? You've got real problems and going by your responses here to not just me but others (I read things carefully and clearly you do not), you really don't want to help yourself. No, you'd rather remain the the victim of your mother and siblings because it means you can continue wallowing in self-pity and blaming them for why your life is miserable. As you state in your post they are living together and perfectly happy living their lives. You're not. That's on you, not them. You're an adult and in adulthood people get choices that they don't get in childhood or adolescence. One of those choices is how much power they're going to give others over their lives.
You will never get an apology from your mother. Neither will I or anyone else. You're not going to get any thanks for your years of caregiving either. No one does. So either not being thanked and victimhood becomes the rest of your life, or you seek out some help to stop letting it.
Please, read the posts carefully before commenting. I never suggested you go and say bad things about your mother at her funeral. Read that again.
Truly, if your mother and siblings really don't care about you at all, then write them the off. Have nothing to do with them. Seek out healthy relationships with people who do care about you. Like friends, other relatives, get in a romantic relationship. Why not?
There's no reason why you can't have all of these. You won't have any if you keep feeling sorry for yourself though.
Also, if she is to blame for all your woes, even as an adult, why do you care that you were removed from managing her legal responsibilities? Wouldn't that have been a moral/ethical/emotional conflict inside you? A hipocracy? Sounds like she was good at controlling her children through money. She has that control because that power is voluntarily given to her by her children.
"I made a final try to end our relationship on a good note, but have been met with a continuation of the emails she's sent me for years accusing me falsely of horrible things and putting me down" -- this is classic dementia behavior. Maybe you're not familiar with what dementia does to people? Maybe you don't spend enough time with your mother or aren't in the care communications loop to understand her decline? (Many adult children are in this position). If she was this way all her life, then dementia could conceivably ramp up that part of her since negativity is common in very senior people as it is. I have an Aunt who I grew up with and we love each other. She's now 100 and says the most hair-curling things to me, accusing me of heinous things. This is dementia.
We don't get to pick our birth families but we do get to choose if and how we engage with them. I'm so sorry that your relationship with your mother couldn't have been at least "not painful". May you gain clarity and wisdom and peace in your heart.
She was very clear to me, stating that she was not leaving me anything in her will, that was the last straw for me, it was not about the money, it was a slap in the face, basically saying that I did not matter to her.
Finally, I had enough, it was either her or me, I chose me! That is the day, to me, she died.
No, I will not attend her funeral, nor will her golden child, who now has turned into the golden goat as he is stuck with her and is not a happy camper.
Do what is best for you!
You never have to see these people again. You owe them nothing. If they do come after you for money, say sorry I don't have it, I gave most of it to Mom when she needed it.
Time to live ur life for you.
They won't come after me for money. My siblings are all very wealthy and I have almost literally nothing. They know that and it has always given them pleasure. Any success or good in my life was met with displeasure and insults.
I'll deal with it when it happens. If DH needs my support, or I'm feeling super kind. But to sit through speeches that will extol her virtues when she was nothing but nasty to me would be very negative to me.
So many of us have such mixed feelings about family. It's truly sad. There is so much love in the world and some people just shove it away with all their strength.
I hope, whatever you decide, that it brings you some measure of peace.
Your advice is great and appreciated. Wishing you peace.
NO ONE is attacking you here. Least of all me. Sure, I've got problems. Who doesn't? I don't think there's a person in the world who never had or doesn't have some kind of problem or other.
I know what it's like to wallow in self-pity and victim mentality though because I did it for a long time. I also know how to get out it. I know how caregiving for an abusive, narcissistic bully can devastate a life. In fact, it almost ended mine.
Yes, this is a support forum and I gave you the best support and advice you're going to get because it's the truth. The ugliest truth is always better than the most beautiful lie.
You have to do everything in your power to drag yourself out of victimhood. It's no easy thing to do. It's ten times harder when there's no support system in person to help you get out of it because it's easy to wallow in self-pity. Blaming others for why your life is what it is becomes comfortable. The pain and misery become like a sort of friend. A companion of sorts, but it will use up your life. Choose joy and love.
The person who told me this lost everyone because of WWII. He even had to leave his country (Poland). He came to America, remarried, had another family, had a life. In fact, he loved life.
He loved life because he knew first-hand how fast life can just be gone. So he didn't live his life as a victim. He didn't live out the rest of his days in misery feeling sorry for himself either.
You don't have let victimhood and resentment win. You deserve to have a life with joy and love in it.
So choose joy and love.
Everyone has bad days when the pain of the past creeps in on us. All people who were ever caregivers to parent have felt resentment towards them. If we come from an abusive and dysfunctional upbrining like I did, it can make you feel like a victim too. We're only human and all of us have human emotions. It's okay to have them and to talk about it when you need to. You choose whether or not you're going to be a victim though. Don't be one. You deserve better than to let your mother and sibling make you their victim because then they win, and you lose.
You nailed it.
If somebody wants to remain a victim they will, no matter what.
I too knew few survivors of horrible events and some exhibited the most positive attitude towards life.
They know, changing people and events is not going to happen, but, embracing life with all the obstacles is crucial. Nobody will experience only the best in this life, most will tip the scale in other direction.
We let it go and begin something wonderful.
No matter how dreadful a parent treated us during their lifetime, it's hard to bury them. I don't know of anyone who 'hands out cigars' at their mother's funeral, to be honest. There's relief in their passing, for a variety of reasons, but there also seems to STILL be lingering feelings afterward. No matter what we do or don't do for them during our lives, after death, there's still some unresolved business I think. For me it comes out in dreams. I did so much for my mother which she never felt to be 'enough' and reminded me of that fact continuously. So now that she's gone, while I suffer no guilt about it, there are still lingering feelings I'm having that I can't even really pinpoint, but that surface in my subconscious while I'm sleeping. Can't even remember the dreams, just waking up feeling odd and unhappy.
So my point, as jumbled as it is, is this: try to figure out what will give YOU the best feeling after the event is over, and do whatever that is. There's no easy answer, and no 'right' or 'wrong' b/c your The Bad Guy no matter what ANYWAY, in the eyes of the 'family'. So who cares? It's what YOU need to do that counts only. Right?
I'm sorry you (and so many of us) are in this dreadful position to begin with. I only pray to God our own children don't feel this way when it's our turn to die. That we caused them so much pain & heartache during their lives that they're here, at this juncture. Very sad.
I'm betting you treated your children differently than your mother treated you, so there will be a different result. I wanted children but my mother did all she could to sabotage that. In the end though it's a plus as I never wanted any child to go through what I did and I have no doubt my mother and siblings would have done the same to any children I would have had. xo