It was a very small policy and never was about the money. It was about the message that sent me. But he was always like that, he changed his will every time he got mad at one of his kids.
My mother sets incredible importance on her Will. On who is executor. On who will get what and then, who will not. I thought about that when you posted that your father changed his Will frequently. How cruel these people are, and have been. Watching my mother's attitude about her belongings is like watching someone set up a carrot and a stick and a whip on a cart without wheels. With herself as cart master.
Power and control...but they know what they are doing, they know the lifetime hurt they are inflicting. It's like the Biblical blessing. It is a blessing, to be believed worthy of being blessed.
That is the statement the parent is making, and it can never be undone, through all the generations to come.
That is the evil in it.
The leering face of the evil in it.
My mother is still with us. I will need to be prepared. I think it will still affect me. But...if I were pulling the cart right now with the carrot just out of reach in the front of my nose and the whip cutting into my back, what would be left of me anyway, by the time the Will was read.
That kind of wickedness spirals down the generations too, I think.
And our families become ever more unbalanced, and we don't know how to name what it is that is wrong, or how to make it right.
Very hurtful, that this has happened to you both.
I anticipate that it will happen to me, too.
I wont parent or punish from the grave.
I will remember having read these words SWOT, when the time comes, for me. To have some way of understanding why these terrible things are happening to us will help us stay steady state.
To parent or punish from the grave.
We have worked so hard here on FOO Chronicles to understand how we were parented, SWOT. You are exactly correct that it a choice for the parent to continue to parent, or punish, from the grave. For those of us raised in certain kinds of families, to know that this is what the parent is doing is a kind of comfort that could limit the pain of it.
Maybe, this is true.
I have not lost my mother, yet. My father's death was like some nightmare circus where the music is all wrong and everyone turns out to be a vampire. You know, all suave and oh, so well dressed. But still and all, thieves performing thievery, the whole time.
It really has been extraordinary, what my mother has done to my father's memory, and to the memory of his mother, my grandmother.
They never stop, these people who are put together that way.
Stu was hurt by being disinherited, not because it meant he was missing out on a lot of money, but because of what it symbolized. As it turned out, it was moot, as Stu predeceased his father by a couple of years.
How awful that must have been for them both. For the father to have played that ultimate card and then, to have lost his child before he could undo what he had done.
Disinheriting is an act of severe rejection, almost always done with malice.
Yes.
Malice is a good word.
Ugly story, ugly legacy.
And for some of us, the stories were very ugly. A friend told me once, when I was telling her what was happening around my father's death: "Dysfunctional family, dysfunctional death."
We will have to learn to label the legacies left us, too: Dysfunctional family, dysfunctional death, dysfunctional legacy.
To know that is an important piece for us, I think. For us to be able to see their actions through our own eyes, and not through the condemnation in theirs.
Or the malice.
That was a very good word, SWOT.
Malice.
I chose my kids over my mother, which I feel was right. But I paid a price for it. It is hurtful to be disinherited for any reason. She shunned and disinherited me out of spite. There was no other reason. But it still hurt. Everyone wants their mother's love. Disinheriting means nothing but disapproval and disdain and no sane person will likely interpret it in any good way. And it is not about the amount of money. It is about the representation of what the deed meant.
Yes.
It gets worse, a couple months before he died my daughter(the one we adopted) went to visit him after work. He made an inappropriate advance to her and told her it was OK because she was not blood. Thatis her last memory of him. Nice huh?
I am so sorry. This is horrifying. I am glad your child told you. Imagine if she had kept that hurt to herself.
What a wicked man. Such a small thing, to have honored her visit to him. But he picked to do what he did, instead. How shaming for you and for the child.
This is an awful thing. An ugly legacy, like SWOT posted.
Malice is such a good word for what these kinds of people do.
Malice.
***
This has been a very good thread for me to read. I will be better prepared for what is coming. Especially the malice part. That must be why they do it. Whatever it is they were trying to break in us, they did not break it. That has to be what fuels the living rage-taken-to-a-whole-other-level that is malice.
But even their malice did not break either of you.
You are both very strong.
You have had to be.
Cedar
