Dec. 12th, 2019 12:31 pm
Funeral woes
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
muckefuckI've been kind of monitoring the funeral preparations from something of a remove, since I'm not too invested in how they turn out. I trust my stepmom and my sister to do a good job and play nice and I'm just here for ancillary support. This week, however, is when I started actively avoiding the whole mess.
My stepmom is all over the place. It's exhausting just talking to her. Every call seems to take at least an hour. I spent one of them trying to walk her through the process of resetting Dad's FB password; of course, when I went into work (where I'd left myself logged in), I was able to do it in like 30 seconds. It also took me that long or less to find a picture for the programme that she'd supposedly been searching for for days.
So even though I should've called her Sunday or Monday to confirm details, I didn't. I made a halfhearted attempt to call my sister (who can at least keep a phone call to ten minutes or less when she needs to). She got back to me last night as I was doing some laundry and the exchange was...less than encouraging.
It looks like none of Dad's family is showing up, despite having nearly four weeks' warning. No, scratch that, it's worse: the only one showing up is his brother-in-law, the asshole ultra-Catholic. My last conversation with him ended with him denying the Holocaust. He tried to speak to me at my brother's funeral and I just walked away. If he tries tho approach me again, he's going to regret it.
Then, at the end of the call, my sister chose to share an incident from Sunday that summed up the tension between her and our stepmom. Our mom had bought some of Dad's favourite candies to share at the reception. Sis mentioned this to Stepmom and she fairly had a meltdown about our mother's "interference". "She needs to control every aspect of this," she told me.
Despite this, I've had trouble getting feedback from her when I need it. She seems eager to take my suggestions, which makes me feel like there may be something gendered to her responses: men "help", women "interfere". Sis also says she was enthusiastic about one of her suggestions, telling her it "came from one of your brothers".
I tried to make Sis feel better by reminding her that scattering the ashes will be a separate ceremony and we can do whatever we want. I can't tell if this is a consolation or not. I hate seeing her so frustrated. For the sake of her mental health, she's resigned herself to just going along with what Stepmom wants. After how successfully we navigated M.'s service, I wasn't expecting this.
My stepmom is all over the place. It's exhausting just talking to her. Every call seems to take at least an hour. I spent one of them trying to walk her through the process of resetting Dad's FB password; of course, when I went into work (where I'd left myself logged in), I was able to do it in like 30 seconds. It also took me that long or less to find a picture for the programme that she'd supposedly been searching for for days.
So even though I should've called her Sunday or Monday to confirm details, I didn't. I made a halfhearted attempt to call my sister (who can at least keep a phone call to ten minutes or less when she needs to). She got back to me last night as I was doing some laundry and the exchange was...less than encouraging.
It looks like none of Dad's family is showing up, despite having nearly four weeks' warning. No, scratch that, it's worse: the only one showing up is his brother-in-law, the asshole ultra-Catholic. My last conversation with him ended with him denying the Holocaust. He tried to speak to me at my brother's funeral and I just walked away. If he tries tho approach me again, he's going to regret it.
Then, at the end of the call, my sister chose to share an incident from Sunday that summed up the tension between her and our stepmom. Our mom had bought some of Dad's favourite candies to share at the reception. Sis mentioned this to Stepmom and she fairly had a meltdown about our mother's "interference". "She needs to control every aspect of this," she told me.
Despite this, I've had trouble getting feedback from her when I need it. She seems eager to take my suggestions, which makes me feel like there may be something gendered to her responses: men "help", women "interfere". Sis also says she was enthusiastic about one of her suggestions, telling her it "came from one of your brothers".
I tried to make Sis feel better by reminding her that scattering the ashes will be a separate ceremony and we can do whatever we want. I can't tell if this is a consolation or not. I hate seeing her so frustrated. For the sake of her mental health, she's resigned herself to just going along with what Stepmom wants. After how successfully we navigated M.'s service, I wasn't expecting this.
Tags:
no subject
no subject
She's got two kids of her own who effectively don't speak to us at all, so that's who she'd vent to, if anyone.
I asked my sis about plans for after the funeral and she was like, "No one's said so, but I figure it'll be us coming here [her house] and [Stepmom] going back home with her kids."
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
https://spartacus-educational.com/Melanie_Klein.htm