How can I help my chaotic - and dyinglittle sister?

DEAR BEL,

I’M THE eldest of four. Three of us have done well and have thriving families. The youngest’s life was different: bad luck, poor relationship and lifestyle choices. She has also lived with borderline personality disorder (BPD) throughout.

Recently — tragically — she was diagnosed with a terminal illness. We’ve all rallied to try to support her and her family but it’s difficult. I’ve always needed to tread on eggshells around her, not knowing what might trigger an outburst.

Her life was difficult, becoming a single parent with three young children who were emotionally neglected, as she couldn’t cope.

They witnessed her being horribly abused by her partner, slipping in and out of depression, feeling overwhelmed and finding solace in alcohol. She tried suicide twice. Our parents helped her a great deal financially and practically.

My relationship with her was quite distant, especially as there is a 15year age gap, I worked abroad a lot and found her chaotic way of life exhausting. Everything would seem fine, but she’d then become indifferent, distant or verbally abusive — all part of BPD.

Each of her (grown-up) children has struggled to make lasting relationships. Her youngest daughter also has BPD and displays irrational and manipulative behaviour with huge emotional highs and angry manic outbursts when triggered.

This has led to a stormy relationship with my sister and her daughter over the years. You’re either best friends or indifferent enemies. Everything is black or white.

Due to false allegations made by her daughter, my sister fell out with our father. She was always very close to him so I believe my niece felt she needed all her attention. It worked: my sister withdrew and is still estranged. My niece has taken on the role of her carer (a good thing in the circumstances) and they’re now inseparable.

My parents are very elderly and frail. They desperately want to see my sister, but she refuses to see Dad. It’s tragic.

I have compassion for my sister and her family, but don’t know how to cope with this added tragedy of her terminal illness and estrangement from our parents.

I feel I need to look after our aged parents and protect myself from the trauma I’m left with in the aftermath of a manic outburst. I have a sense of sadness and guilt because I know my sister is dying and I am powerless to change or help what is happening.

JANETTE

Your subject-line was, ‘Sadness and guilt’ — surely the story of humankind.

We experience sadness from babyhood and learn guilt as soon as we are aware of the feelings of others, as when a small child knows it has made mother sad.

Yet why do people tend to regard these feelings with suspicion and shame?

To me they are profoundly important as proof of all that’s best in the human condition. How we recognise our fates as thinking, feeling people — and learn to accept and cope.

The story of your youngest sister’s broken life is indeed tragic: the one member of the family who, for whatever unknown reasons, went wrong. It’s easy to imagine how annoying this was at first, before you realised the full extent of her damage.

It’s also clear to me that for you, as the oldest sibling always concerned about your parents, it must also have been a cause of resentment, as you witnessed how she broke their hearts and used them as well.

If part of your current guilt dates back to those years, then I beg you to realise that there was nothing you could have done. Guilt with the intention of making things better is fine, but guilt at what is past and cannot be recalled or helped is just pointless — and can become corrosive.

What’s more, it is hardly your fault that you were never close to her

— 15 years older, with such reservations about her as well as your own life to live.

I suggest the situation is not so different now. What can you change by feeling guilty? But sadness — yes.

Sorrow for a life seemingly wasted, which brought unhappiness to others. Sorrow for three fatherless children and their unhappy lives. Sorrow for your old father, falsely accused, yet longing for reconciliation. Sorrow for your mother who will inevitably have wondered, over many years, what she did wrong.

Now is the time for you to take good care of your parents, and for your niece to take care of the mother who failed her. What else can be done? I chose your letter because you recognise all that and know your sister’s diagnosis has directed a pitiless spotlight on all that has gone before. It is not so much a problem as an important lesson for others — all of us who understand Reinhold Niebuhr’s words:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.