Families are for Love (Unpublished from 2018, now sharing)

I recently lost my dear mother-in-law.

Her death is in itself devastating.  The chain of events that culminated in her death still confounds me. The loss of this loving person in my life is huge.

And, I realize this is normal.

What's not normal is the lasting rift in our family, which started several years ago and ultimately contributed to a selfish, impulsive decision that cost my mother-in-law her life.

One of the things in my life that I cherished was our family.  This is really my husband's family, but they became mine a long time ago, even before my marriage to their son.  My husband's parents took me into their hearts and encircled me with so much love, people frequently asked me if they were my parents.  Yes, they actually were.  They said so.  How lucky I've been to have two sets of parents.

Recent years haven't been easy for my in-laws, who were dealing with advanced age and associated issues, such as memory loss.  This is when the family needs to come together and help make decisions that would honor our parents' wishes and would be focused on making their lives easier and worth living.

Then the unthinkable happened.

The youngest child was given power over the parents' medical and financial decisions.  The reasoning that she lived closest to her parents and saw them most frequently certainly was true, but the fact that she had always lived an entitled life by taking advantage of her parents' generosity should have been considered. Sadly, critical decisions since have been made emotionally and impulsively with a deaf ear to any of our input.

The list of tragic results of poor decision-making keeps getting longer, as I said culminating with the decision to put my mother-in-law in hospice on a morphine drip to slow and stop her breathing... even though she wasn't dying.  And her burial was rushed to fit into schedules, no even allowing her husband of 72 years to attend (because he was hospitalized, and this couldn't wait to give him time to be there.)

Worse even than this is how after this horrendous event two months ago, it's like she never existed.  No talk of her.  No mourning. The attitude is "that's done and over with!" After a lifetime of taking care of the family and even raising the sister's own kids, not to feel anything is making my head explode.

I realize this is MY problem - that I'm inferring my feelings on to her.  But, I've never seen such hard-hearted behavior. My in-laws lived for the family, they imparted that on all of us.  Yet, our questions, suggestions, concerns and objections are seen as an affront to her power, as being non-differential to her position to make all decisions unilaterally.  That's part of the problem - she wasn't supposed to make these decisions alone.  It was to be a family matter. Alas, things haven't turned out that way.

I'm learning the hard way people will take power and do with it as they will.  It's been really ugly, compounded by the eldest sibling's earnest belief we must support her decisions because it's so hard on her, and she's going through so much. Together, they've essentially shutout my husband and my from the family.  To what end?  Because they seem to love power more than family.

So sad.