Now Mum is gone, my brother is asking me for money

THIS is a difficult hand to play — and is a problem I know well: a sibling more like a creature from another planet than a product of the same parents. Although you two finally fell out in May this year, you were probably having difficulties for years. Your mother’s death and funeral may have triggered a hostility not far below the surface. Am I right?

Sibling issues are hardly new to this column. Inevitably, I say: don’t look backwards; accept a family relationship may be over but leave the door open at the same time; and vow to step outside the family and control your own life.

Money is so often the poisonous serpent in the family garden — yet if siblings already have a good relationship I doubt filthy lucre would corrupt it. But if they’ve not really got on, the stage is set for a terminal disruption.

From what you’ve said, I suspect this situation is unmendable. You despise your brother for sponging off your mother when she was alive and believe he has done little with his life. You dislike his wife and feel angry she did not encourage her children to have a good (or any) relationship with their grandmother.

The final straw was this man whingeing about money when your mother was barely in her grave, so that he sponged off you (£8,000 is a lot of money) as he did your mother. No wonder you don’t want to speak to him again.

Yet when you mention his ‘stress’ and mental health, I detect a note of pity. Who knows whether, in the future, you and he might become reconciled?

SOMETIMES, in families, an immediate break is necessary. Toxicity is draining and, anyway, isn’t this the point when, having been a good daughter and carer, you need to make a new start?

You need to recognise that you’re probably feeling a double whammy of grief: for your mother (obviously), but also for the brother you’d have liked to have

had. Feeling ‘ very angry’ will do you no good; rage and resentment just serve to turn the key in the lock on the unhappy present.

What you need is to open that door and cut loose.

What will you do now? You are a retired nurse with an NHS pension — and this country is crying out for skills like yours. Have you thought of returning to your profession in some capacity?

Would it not take your mind off your mother and your brother — as well as money — to investigate ways and means?

You could not help your mother’s decline and death, nor your brother’s unpleasant greed. But you can now be in control of your own life. For all I know, you may already be making these plans. Have a look at this website: healthcareers.nhs. uk/ explore-roles/ nursing/ returning nursing and see if it triggers some ideas. And another website might help you by sharing the experiences of others: allnurses. com/ retired-nurses-c160 I wish you positivity and peace.

Lives of great men all remind us We can make our lives sublime, And, departing, leave behind us Footsteps on the sands of time ... Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (U.S. poet 1807-1882)