life is weird, isn't it?
2026-02-25 10:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
myveryown_nemesisGood Morning, you Beautiful People!
This weekend is the spreading of my sister's ashes. A smattering of family drama has begun. Interestingly, most of the drama is playing out in my husband's imagination. Life is weird, isn't it? I feel strangely calm about all of this. My biggest concerns are how my niece and my brother-in-law (her stepfather; they are estranged) will interact, and how she will interact with her daughter (they are also estranged). In the case of the former, I will protect my niece to the fullest. In the latter? Well, my niece wasn't a good mother to her daughter, so that one is complex. But my thoughts on the matter are that I can just provide a buffer, as needed. I don't need to say anything beyond "this conversation isn't appropriate at this time". This is about saying goodbye to K, honoring her wishes, and leaving all and any drama out of it.
Anyway...my niece will be arriving here tomorrow night, and we will drive down together on Friday. The ashes will be spread at dawn on Saturday, and on Sunday, we head home. My family is staying at a hotel, my niece is staying with her brother, and the rest of the family up here (VA, MD, and PA) will be staying with my sister L.
Today is about doing the cleaning I didn't do yesterday so that the house will be ready for a visitor. I also need to do a next-to-last-minute errand run to pick up meds for my husband, dog food for Ted's kenneling over the weekend, and something easy to pop in the airfryer or microwave for Sunday's dinner.
I hope you find something beautiful in your day, and as always, thank you for being here.
This weekend is the spreading of my sister's ashes. A smattering of family drama has begun. Interestingly, most of the drama is playing out in my husband's imagination. Life is weird, isn't it? I feel strangely calm about all of this. My biggest concerns are how my niece and my brother-in-law (her stepfather; they are estranged) will interact, and how she will interact with her daughter (they are also estranged). In the case of the former, I will protect my niece to the fullest. In the latter? Well, my niece wasn't a good mother to her daughter, so that one is complex. But my thoughts on the matter are that I can just provide a buffer, as needed. I don't need to say anything beyond "this conversation isn't appropriate at this time". This is about saying goodbye to K, honoring her wishes, and leaving all and any drama out of it.
Anyway...my niece will be arriving here tomorrow night, and we will drive down together on Friday. The ashes will be spread at dawn on Saturday, and on Sunday, we head home. My family is staying at a hotel, my niece is staying with her brother, and the rest of the family up here (VA, MD, and PA) will be staying with my sister L.
Today is about doing the cleaning I didn't do yesterday so that the house will be ready for a visitor. I also need to do a next-to-last-minute errand run to pick up meds for my husband, dog food for Ted's kenneling over the weekend, and something easy to pop in the airfryer or microwave for Sunday's dinner.
I hope you find something beautiful in your day, and as always, thank you for being here.
Thoughts
Date: 2026-02-26 01:59 am (UTC)My sympathies.
>>My biggest concerns are how my niece and my brother-in-law (her stepfather; they are estranged) will interact, and how she will interact with her daughter (they are also estranged).<<
Well, I'd seat them away from each other and, if possible, recruit at least one or two other people to keep them apart. If the facility has ushers or security, quietly notify them of the issue; then if a fight starts, you can just let the staff deal with it.
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2026-02-26 08:00 pm (UTC)Right after my sister passed, my BIL asked my niece to come and look through my sister's things with her brother to see if there was anything she wanted to take home with her. My niece didn't get down to SC fast enough to see her mom before she died. So my niece and nephew went over together. My nephew has a pretty good relationship with my brother-in-law, and accepts him as his stepdad...sometimes he calls him Dad, sometimes he calls him by name. As soon as they walked into his home, my BIL bellowed at my niece, "I want you to know that you brought your situation on yourself and you deserve what you got." My nephew was appalled and didn't know what he meant. My niece literally turned on her heel and left his home. I heard the story from both my niece and my nephew, and their stories line up.
BIL invited her down for the spreading of the ashes, but he also invited her to his home, then verbally smacked her in the face. I know that he's mourning, but there is no excuse for that behavior. I don't think that he does these things intentionally--he has a way of being obtuse to the point of being verbally aggressive. It's a hard thing to explain, but I've seen him that way before, and I'll be damned if he tries to shut her out somehow.
The whole remembrance is only supposed to take 10 minutes, which is a good thing. But yeah, their relationship is unhealthy and volatile. I'm pretty sure that my niece and her daughter will just avoid each other. My niece is starting to see how she wasn't a very good mother to her daughter, and she regrets things that she has said in the past. She also accepts that their estrangement is in the hands of her daughter now and has no plans to try to insert herself into her daughter's life.
So, yeah, just a bunch of dysfunctional folks hanging out on the beach together. Hopefully, things will go smoothly.