When we last left my sister, she was ignoring me per usual. (OCS people are excellent ignorers due to their innate ability to focus entirely on their own inner dialogue.) Playing bridge 24/7 helped her achieve her goal, but I daresay even if she loathed bridge, she would have found a way to thumb her nose at me.
Oh yes, the Accident. This occurred in the northern regions of Arizona in Flagstaff where winter snow bears the brunt of the bad weather news. My niece, who was in her twenties, was a passenger (sans seatbelts ) in a serious accident that injured her spine. This collision caused my sister to break her OCS promise never to acknowledge me. She had to call for the simple reason that she needed me to do her bidding.
Naturally she ordered me to pick up her injured daughter (who was being air lifted from the Flagstaff hospital ER to Scottsdale's airport. The plan was to take her to a local doctor and have her injuries assessed. I complied, still playing the docile, malleable sib (really, what else could I do without coming off as a true bitch) and I was told that my niece was only a hair away from being a paraplegic. We immediately hospitalized her at a world-renown hospital that specializes in spine and nerve injuries (Barrow Neurological Center in Phoenix).
My sister and her husband flew out to Arizona. At first my niece didn't want to speak to her mother, and when curiosity prompted me to ask why not, the niece replied that her mother was too controlling. (No surprise here that --that was my first hard clue that I was dealing with a flagrant case of OCS). Surgery fixed the medical problem, but the niece had to remain in the hospital for a few days. Meanwhile my sib and her husband, more relaxed now that the crisis had retreated, carried out their parental duties. They also were forced to socialize with the enemy camp.
My husband and I met them for dinners and updates on the niece's progress. Although my sib was genuinely upset about her daughter's injuries she found the time and energy to insult me and the entire Grand Canyon state. She visited my home, where I had recently relocated, and walked through the entire ranch house without making a comment. It was like she was on auto pilot and her speech controls hadn't been properly adjusted. I thought perhaps I might have missed something emanating from her lips, but my husband reassured me later on that my hearing was fine, and no, she did not say a word about the house nor did she thank us for our part in seeing that her daughter got the best care possible.
A verbal thank you would have been the usual response for normal people, but for my sib, it was an exclusionary clause on her OCS policy. Of course it didn't help that for three straight days it rained--weather that my sib used to further denigrate the state although she knew as well as I did, that wetness was about as common to Phoenix as sun to New Jersey.
As I am wont to do, after they flew back to NJ I reflected on the extraordinary events that brought my sib to Arizona for a second time. Her prior behaviors started to make sense with the remaining pieces of the jig-saw puzzle that had finally fallen into place. The picture was now complete: My sib was a genuine OCS, and I would have to cope with that reality for as long as we maintained a relationship.
Back in New Jersey and in between marathon bridge session my sib concentrated on suing the driver for his part in the accident. Luckily I escaped any legal blame, but considering her litigation history I'd say we were damn smart to allow her to crawl around on the floor before she was hospitalized.
I learned all this from my mother who was neutral much like Switzerland. Dad swallowed the OCS manifestations my sister was busily honing, splitting his free time between extolling my sister's married-with-children lifestyle and knocking my abandonment of NJ to shlep to the wilds of Arizona.
Next installment: My OCS sib takes on the Grim Reaper.
Oh yes, the Accident. This occurred in the northern regions of Arizona in Flagstaff where winter snow bears the brunt of the bad weather news. My niece, who was in her twenties, was a passenger (sans seatbelts ) in a serious accident that injured her spine. This collision caused my sister to break her OCS promise never to acknowledge me. She had to call for the simple reason that she needed me to do her bidding.
Naturally she ordered me to pick up her injured daughter (who was being air lifted from the Flagstaff hospital ER to Scottsdale's airport. The plan was to take her to a local doctor and have her injuries assessed. I complied, still playing the docile, malleable sib (really, what else could I do without coming off as a true bitch) and I was told that my niece was only a hair away from being a paraplegic. We immediately hospitalized her at a world-renown hospital that specializes in spine and nerve injuries (Barrow Neurological Center in Phoenix).
My sister and her husband flew out to Arizona. At first my niece didn't want to speak to her mother, and when curiosity prompted me to ask why not, the niece replied that her mother was too controlling. (No surprise here that --that was my first hard clue that I was dealing with a flagrant case of OCS). Surgery fixed the medical problem, but the niece had to remain in the hospital for a few days. Meanwhile my sib and her husband, more relaxed now that the crisis had retreated, carried out their parental duties. They also were forced to socialize with the enemy camp.
My husband and I met them for dinners and updates on the niece's progress. Although my sib was genuinely upset about her daughter's injuries she found the time and energy to insult me and the entire Grand Canyon state. She visited my home, where I had recently relocated, and walked through the entire ranch house without making a comment. It was like she was on auto pilot and her speech controls hadn't been properly adjusted. I thought perhaps I might have missed something emanating from her lips, but my husband reassured me later on that my hearing was fine, and no, she did not say a word about the house nor did she thank us for our part in seeing that her daughter got the best care possible.
A verbal thank you would have been the usual response for normal people, but for my sib, it was an exclusionary clause on her OCS policy. Of course it didn't help that for three straight days it rained--weather that my sib used to further denigrate the state although she knew as well as I did, that wetness was about as common to Phoenix as sun to New Jersey.
As I am wont to do, after they flew back to NJ I reflected on the extraordinary events that brought my sib to Arizona for a second time. Her prior behaviors started to make sense with the remaining pieces of the jig-saw puzzle that had finally fallen into place. The picture was now complete: My sib was a genuine OCS, and I would have to cope with that reality for as long as we maintained a relationship.
Back in New Jersey and in between marathon bridge session my sib concentrated on suing the driver for his part in the accident. Luckily I escaped any legal blame, but considering her litigation history I'd say we were damn smart to allow her to crawl around on the floor before she was hospitalized.
I learned all this from my mother who was neutral much like Switzerland. Dad swallowed the OCS manifestations my sister was busily honing, splitting his free time between extolling my sister's married-with-children lifestyle and knocking my abandonment of NJ to shlep to the wilds of Arizona.
Next installment: My OCS sib takes on the Grim Reaper.
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