It’s true that misfortunes never come singly. At the time my mum was literally attacked by her two sisters each time they were on a group video call, she’d been diagnosed with a couple of major illnesses, one of which being a congenital heart disease (the other one later turned out to be a false alarm, thank God). It was imperative that she avoid upsetting or stressful situations and yet, she was constantly tormented by the sisterly feud caused by granny. One time during a video call, my younger aunt’s attitude towards mum was beyond unacceptable, and I almost exploded and yelled cuss words at her. It was already a very stressful time for my family without any added distress, but the three women—granny and aunts—were just too generous with their provision of it. Granny and my older aunt kept phoning mum and perturbing her, and as mum couldn’t afford to be harassed like that due to her conditions, I encouraged her to block them on her phone, which she did. When mum didn’t pick up their calls, they started calling me instead. I immediately blocked granny since I was quite angry at her. When my older aunt phoned me, I reluctantly answered, and she began interrogating me about mum’s health. I explained mum’s conditions to her, but it felt like, rather than being concerned about mum’s health, she only wanted to confirm that the conditions weren’t serious, and therefore mum couldn’t be excused from the caring duties. After this call, the aunt, too, was added to my blocked list. By this time, both mum and I had been fed up with the three women. Whilst I was pretty much ready to sever ties with them, at least for a while, mum remained conflicted. I guess that’s the difference between first- and second-degree familial relationships.
It was only after all five children had experienced what it is like to look after granny that some of them had the slightest idea that they might have been wrong to believe every single word uttered by granny thus far. It became obvious to them that she was definitely senile. She kept on saying that she wanted to bequeath her apartment to her youngest son whilst enjoying all the services provided by the other children, thereby upsetting the latter. She asked my younger aunt to withdraw some money from her bank account to give it to the aunt and his son. Then at dawn the next day, she woke up the aunt, saying that the money had been taken from her account. Similarly, she gave some money to my older aunt’s daughter only to criticise her for not being grateful for it. What’s more, she called her other children to spread tales about these false accusations. Big uncle’s wife even said that, when granny gives you money, you have to give back the same amount or more right on that spot, or otherwise you’ll be labelled a thief. After tasting about 1/100 of what my family had gone through over the years, my younger aunt admitted to my big uncle that she might have made a mistake when she was being rude to my mum.
Now it seems clear that granny can’t live alone any longer. Not only has she deteriorated physically, but it’s becoming increasingly apparent that she has dementia. Her older sister had suffered from it before she died, so it’s not exactly a shock that granny has it too. Somehow, it’s only mum who’s acknowledging it, whilst her other siblings are either denying or keeping silent about it, but they’ve finally decided to expedite granny’s admission into a home. No child of hers is willing to take her to their place and look after her any more. Granny has successfully exhausted all of her children with her profoundly negative and ungrateful attitude, along with her snappy, snarky tongue.
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