Personal Woes and Advice 2

[rogueboy]

...I just found out that my grandmother died this morning.

And all my mother is doing is blabbering about 'oh we've expected this so long blah blah blah' and not even caring.

Curse words. Just... Curse words. Frak.

Unfortunately, given my experience with my mother, she really doesn't. All she's done the last several years is complain about my grandma and her reaction is more 'Oh well, now I won't have to hear about it from my sister anymore time to get the will figured out'. She has a near-complete lack of empathy and doesn't form any sort of real attachment to anything, which is something everyone in the family but her has noticed and can't stand in her. *sigh* She's kind of a mild psychopath. Mental health issues run in this family like crazy, sadly.

I'm going to respond to a fair amount of what I think you're saying here, but it may be somewhat rambling, so bear with me.

3.5 years ago, I dealt with a similar loss. My grandfather passed away, and my dad (it was his father who died) told me about it at about 10 at night. I cried myself to sleep that night. (Crying is very rare for me - I can't remember the last time I cried aside from that night). It wasn't entirely surprising; he'd been diagnosed with Parkinson's 20-25 years earlier, and had spent the last 5 years or so almost completely debilitated by it, to the point that he required a wheelchair and a full-time 'assistant' to help him with everything he wanted or had to do. And a year before he passed, I (with my family) had visited him in Israel (where he and my grandmother have lived since before I was born). While we were there, he stopped eating, got incredibly dehydrated/malnourished, and wound up with fairly severe hypothermia while in the hospital for the other issues. No one (us, other family, doctors, my grandmother...) thought he was going to leave the hospital. As I suggested, however, he recovered, returned home, and then passed away semi-unexpectedly (no lead-up that I was aware of, at the least) a year afterwards. Unfortunately, I had an exam the next night, which I couldn't move. What got me out of being depressed was a stupid, completely unrelated text from my best friend (who had no idea what I was going through, since I hadn't told anyone).

My point is this: do what you have to in order to keep yourself functioning, at least enough to take care of yourself. Something will snap you out of it. Whether you'll end up with that being as soon after the fact as mine was (~24 hours) or not, I obviously can't say. It was a stupid coincidence that helped me. But make yourself your priority, and try to do things that will put you in a good mood. If that means taking a break from talking with your mom, then do that. If it means spending a few days by yourself at home, then do that. And if it means going out and having drinks with friends, whether specifically for this purpose or not, then do that.

As to the "well, he'd been sick, and at least it's over now" approach that your mother is taking, I have second-hand experience in dealing with that, through a friend and coworker of mine. Her grandfather (also overseas, for whatever that means or doesn't) has been in and out of the hospital repeatedly, with various different ailments, and has been told that he's unlikely to leave the hospital on at least 3 occasions. My friend has traveled to Germany (3 days of flying, round trip) in order to be there when he passed, only to have him not get better or worse while she was there, and then recover once she returned. (We're in grad school, so vacations are sharply limited.) Her mother (along with the other children) began hoping that he'd pass away so that the yo-yo effect could just end after the second hospital stay, while it took until the 3rd for my friend to join them. My point is this: depending on how hard the lead-up has been on her, your mother's cynical reaction to your grandmother's passing may be entirely understandable. A "we knew it was coming" death can hit different people differently, depending on how the "it's coming" phase affected each person.

tl;dr: If your mother's response is causing you stress, limit your contact with her. And do things for yourself to help you cope; you know best what those might be.

If you think it might help, and you're comfortable sharing here, feel free to share more about your grandmother. If you're not comfortable sharing publicly, my inbox is open. Or just write a letter to no one about your grandmother if that's all you're comfortable doing.