My sister and I were not always #estranged, but we were always competitive although I was not usually aware of it. In hindsight I know now that my sister (who I'll call Sally because I don't like the name) felt insecure in the family for far different reasons than I did. While I never felt worthy enough, she was worried I might be too good and displace her Number 1 position. So she #indulged in a tacit denial that she and I were related.
She couldn't quite bring herself to admit that she had a younger sibling. I call this attitude #OnlyChild Syndrome, and I've mentioned it before. Sally had a bad case of it throughout life, and it led to fierce competition on her part. She got the best grades, was the best piano student, was the best religious scholar (rewarded by her #BatMitzvah at a Newark, NJ, venue known for excellence in food and catering), the best college student, the best lawyer's wife, the best mother, and, of course, the best daughter.
Unfortunately by the time my parents developed serious #illnesses in their seventies and eighties, she had added another "best" to her score card. As the "best" bridge player in the tri-state area of NJ, NY and CT, she worked hard to maintain that title. But it required a lot of effort and time, and since she was teaching high school, she only devoted herself to bridge on weekends. However this conflicted with her effort to be the best daughter. My parents required more than a cursory phone call each day. They really had no friends since relocating from Maplewood, NJ to East Brunswick, where my sister and her husband lived. As a result, they clung to my sister as they would a life line.
The other not-so-good daughter--that would be me--had moved to Arizona, #eliminating herself entirely from the parental equation due to emotional fatigue. I was sick and tired of my sister and her three "darling" children getting all the positive attention while my husband and I seemed to get leftovers. Although I too had married a lawyer and had graduated from college with an instant career at my disposal, I was in failing health....mentally. Back then psychology and mood disorders were considered a nearly occult science--a combination of hocus pocus, voodoo, and moral dereliction--daughters weren't allowed to be diagnosed with depression or #OCD. Considered a "problem child," my entire life, I watched as my parents avoided me and gravitated toward Sally's lifestyle, which was traditional upper middle-class with children. On the other hand, I was relegated to the role of #crazy maverick with no kids-- a #moody child who had grown up to become a disturbed adult.
But when my father became #ill with a combination of AAA (aortic abdominal aneurysm) and dementia, I tasted my fifteen minutes of fame as a "good daughter." I hopped on a plane and steered my grateful mother through my father's surgery and stayed stoically through his funeral and the aftermath of mourning, which in the Jewish religion is known as "shiva." For once in her life my sister took a back seat, mostly due to her passion and dedication to bridge. Even with an ailing father and a needy mother, it was hard for her to separate herself from her card games, and my mother noticed her neglect of duty. In a way I got promoted due to my non-conflict with anything else, especially what most people would consider a recreational activity. Due to my sister's over-the-top attraction to bridge I became a better daughter to my mother's way of thinking, and this positive appraisal was not lost on Sally.
I don't know exactly what was going on in her mind, but I think she began to worry when my mother said she wanted to hire a lawyer--and not my brother-in-law--to go over her will. I was oblivious to the import of this action; I merely figured she was updating her will because it was old. In hindsight, I now see what my crafty sister recognized as an #ominous activity portending problems for her. Mom was definitely updating her will, but she also was making some changes in content. I remember Mom telling me proudly on the telephone that she was splitting any remaining monies 50/50 between my sister and me. That made perfect sense to me--that was the usual thing parents did (divide an inheritance between siblings), so I never probed further since the death topic is not my idea of amusing telephone #conversation.
Meanwhile I'm still becoming a "#betterdaughter" in my mom's eye. I call every day, I invite her out to Arizona, we go visiting to San Diego and Las Vegas, I listen calmly while she complains about my sister's love #affair with bridge. All in all I'm actually turning in a performance worthy of the role of concerned daughter and at least as good as my sister's contribution. Amazingly enough my sister and I are on speaking terms at this point. We need to bolster each other's morale. We exchange information on my mother's new best friend--the female half of an aged couple who live opposite my mom's condo. We both agree that it's great luck that my mom has someone with whom she can share like-minded activities, lunches, and TV watching.
About five years pass by without incident, and my mom shows the very beginnings of #dementia. Sally misses the boat on this one, but I notice my mother repeats things on the phone, and her "best friend," Claire also shares some alarming #symptoms. Things #deteriorate, mom has a heart attack, and now she is moved to an upscale assisted living facility. No one is happy, least of all my mother.
When I fly out to NJ for my nephew's wedding, I see that my mother is struggling and needs to be relocated to a nursing home. Neither my sister nor I feel capable of rendering the 24/7 care we know my mother will ultimately require. We are not that selfless.
But there is an additional complication. I see that my sister is unable to even cope with a mother whose personality has changed from smart door mat to childish aggressor. I fear she will not offer my mother enough support and off-site activities. I offer to take mom to Arizona and find a facility near me. I know there are lots of decent nursing homes there, and I'll be able to visit her several times a week.
I almost succeed. I get her seated on the plane when one or two passengers who are unaware of her dementia tell the airline staff that I am abusing my mother. In a way I am if you call giving her a few demanding and nervously uttered orders to be quiet and tightly snapping on her seat belt a form of parental abuse. We are escorted off the plane by a policeman, and I dissolve into tears. My mom is so out of it that she doesn't register that I'm crying. The policemen ask her a few questions, she doesn't respond fully to their inquiries, and I tell them the sad story of my mom's decline into #dementia. Then the police leave, and we sit side by side waiting for my brother-in-law to pick us up.
My sister suggests a #Jewish nursing home in Somerset, and the three of us visit. Naturally Mom is frightened but cooperates. Now begins a fateful journey in which I continue to call Mom every day, hire a nursing assistant at the home to give her extra attention and try to gather information from the nurses, my sister, and the health aid. My sister has #Power of Attorney so she can do what she wants with my mom's money. I tell her that it's mom's money so she should be generous in using it to provide her with supplementary care. There is a dead silence after I share these remarks.
Meanwhile Mom #deteriorates, cannot speak on the phone, but is still bonded to her nursing aide. She is used to the facility even though I'm not impressed with their care of dementia patients and gets around in a wheelchair. To everyone's surprise, the facility is sold and under new management. My sister can't contain her knee-jerk reaction and states that she intends to shift Mom to another home in West Orange. I object, telling her you don't take a 90-year-old woman out of an environment she's been in for several years and move her. It's too stressful. I write this down in a long email, which I send her.
Regardless of my entreaties, she ignores my pleas and what I consider common-sense request and disrespects me, complicating a bad situation by moving our fragile patient to what my sister insists is a better facility. The aide cries, Mom doesn't adjust well to this so-called dementia unit. The nursing home doesn't seem to know what to do with #Alzheimer patients. As a result, they send her to the psychiatric ward of a nearby hospital because "she might be a danger to others." This falls under the heading of institutional ineptitude, and the hospital returns her to the facility because Mom is not a threat. I hire the original nursing aide to go visit my mother so as to give her some security and comfort. My sister is not thrilled with this idea, but she agrees. Up to a point.
It's not until Mom dies after being in the West Orange home for only two or three weeks that I learn why my sister has been so impatient and intractable with my requests and suggestions. In an angry discussion following Mom's funeral (which my sister had pre-paid six months ago and detailed to me in a rather morbidly precise way) I learn that the terms of my mother's revised will are the basis for her hostility. Originally my father had divided the monies equally between my sister, my sister's three kids, and me. If my Mom had followed my father's example, I would have received 20 percent to Sally's 80 percent.
It is my "ah-hah" moment and I understand why my sister dislikes me. Unbeknownst to me, my mother changed her original will, which would have followed my father's wishes, and substituted a more equitable 50/50 distribution in its place. I can't believe that my #family has turned into a cliche. My sister's jealousy has fueled her actions, and the money and power (Power of Attorney, investor of all mom's monies, executor of the will) she has wielded for the last few years has become her instruments of revenge. She did not act on behalf of our mother; she acted on behalf of her own desire to get even with me.
After that we don't speak for seven years, and an attempt on her part to rekindle our relationship is aborted when I realize she won't take responsibility for her part in the nursing home disaster and actually refuses to #apologize. At the same time I speak with Sally's sister-in-law and find out that my sister and her husband treated "Fannie" in a similarly disrespectful manner. It is additional proof that Sally's moral compass is so out of whack it might as well be non-existent.
Then out of the blue a few days ago I get an e-mail from Sally. Her husband's heart is failing, and the 76-year-old will undergo open heart surgery this week. A surgeon will transplant a Left Ventricular Assisted Device (LVAD) to help my brother-in-law's heart function more normally. To say I'm surprised is to minimize my reaction. I'm amazed on two levels: first, that she contacted me, and second, that her husband is so debilitated by heart disease.
Heart #disease is nothing to joke about.....or ignore. So I email back my concern and my best wishes for a speedy recovery. I'm only fibbing a little. I have no real issues with Sally's husband, but at best I'm ambivalent about my sister's marital health crisis. One part of me wants to sympathize with her precarious situation, and the other part of me wishes to ignore her implied solicitation of TLC. This internal conflict is the end product of a lengthy sibling rivalry that reached into my crib. We were never close as sisters, but as the competition heated up, the sibling bonds weakened from the frost that enveloped them. Eventually those bonds stiffened and snapped. It can happen to any siblings, especially in a dysfunctional family. It happened to me.
Comments