Time doesn’t always heal all wounds

Dealing with my siblings is like walking in a mine field - never knowing when someone’s going to erupt.

We’re five adult children of an alcoholic father (he died at 65), and a passive, repressed mother.

She’s now 88, sweet-natured, but failing in health due to diabetes.

One brother died recently at 64 of kidney failure (from diabetes and alcoholism). He alienated us with his anger and lived alone. There’s much unresolved childhood trauma and anger in my three remaining sisters. I’ve been attending Al-Anon for 25 years in an effort to change my thinking and behaviours. I’ve had individual and group therapy.

I have people who love and respect me, but the lack of my sisters’ love and trust pains me.

As Al-Anon suggests, I didn’t want to push it on them. I’d hoped they might notice a difference in me and want to join. That didn’t happen.

As my mother ages, when we get together, tempers rise, assumptions and conclusions emerge. If I try to sort things out, they get angrier.

I’ve been asked by my mother to be the executor of her will. It’s a straight-forward will, but I’m dreading it.

I think I should farm it out to an estate attorney.

But after my mother passes, I fear I won’t have any family who’ll love and support each other in old age.

I’m grieving the loving family I never had.

I don’t know how to help them to find healing for the rest of our time together. Therapy is a non-starter due to cost and attitudes.

– Expecting the Worst

You’ve already grieved the family you never had in the healthiest of ways, through healing yourself.

Trying to carry along these contrary and resistant siblings is too heavy a burden. They’ll most likely withdraw further.

Take the will to an estate lawyer who’s recommended by someone you trust. Check that lawyer’s credentials and track record, plus any clients’ comments and critiques.

Then have your siblings regularly informed by the lawyer’s office of what’s in the will and how it’s being handled. Have it made clear, without pushing the point, what your duties are as executor, especially in case of a dispute.

Carry on trying to stay connected the best you can.

But don’t expect the impossible. Be proud of what you’ve achieved regarding your own state of mind, and protect it.

TIP OF THE DAY

When your family history’s rife with sibling resentment and anger, aging won’t resolve it.