Full speed ahead

I am going to get this off my chest, and then I am going to let it go.  This involves family drama, so feel free to skip right over this whole thing.  I am quite aware that publishing this may mean that some see me as a lesser person; frankly, I don't give a sh*t.  Herewith is the contents of an email I sent to a family member, a few days after Mom passed away, when I was taking crap from all sides.  I decided to damn the torpedoes.

"Just in case anyone is wondering why I am so furious with Shirley and Dale*:

Shirley took hundreds of thousands of dollars from Mom  over the years. Forty thousand a year for providing a spare room for your still-active mother is considered reasonable? Shirley got an $800 monthly stipend, plus she took another thousand in cash out of mom's checking account every month. Some months it was more than a thousand. Plus mom paid the utility bill, and the cable bill, and the phone bill. PLUS “mom” often bought groceries at Wegman's.  A check was written on her account for $177.00 in groceries at Wegman's on the day before Thanksgiving; in essence, mom bought Thanksgiving dinner for Shirley and her family. A dinner that mom was unable to eat because she was struggling for her life with undiagnosed pneumonia.  (I was told only that mom had  "a cold".  If I had had any idea how serious the situation was, I would have taken mom to the ER.)

And in all the years that mom spent with Shirley, I never once saw Shirley give her a kiss, or a hug, or a shoulder rub. Mom got much more person-to-person contact from the aides in the nursing home than she ever got from Shirley.

Shirley and Dale berated Chris and Karen (my sister and her boyfriend) repeatedly, loudly and IN FRONT OF MOM, for feeding her. (Priceless comments were also made about "a choking cat will swallow if you shove food down its throat" and "Look at her!  What kind of life is this?", again, all in front of my conscious and aware mother.)  In reality, it was the lack of timely medical care that ultimately resulted in mom's death. If Shirley had not waited until mom was half-dead before finally taking her to a doctor, the outcome may have been different. And if Shirley and Dale had spent any time at all at the hospital or at the nursing home, they would have known that feeding mom was also being done by myself, the nurses, and the aides, because there was a very real possibility that mom would recover.  She was placed in a rehab facility and not in hospice because she was EXPECTED TO SURVIVE.  If at any time the medical staff felt that feeding mom was detrimental, they would have issued an NPO order, and the feeding would have stopped per mom's wishes via her Living Will. Again, if Shirley and Dale had chosen to be involved in her care, they would have known this.  Instead, they washed their hands of the whole thing, stopping by only to bitch at the people who were actively working to get mom back to health.  It is my understanding that Dale has been telling people that he spent hours with mom in the hospital and nursing home every day; that is a flat-out lie. He would fly in, toss a rosary over something, and go right back out the door.  

And on the Friday before mom's death, he declared to Chris that it was “all our fault that he couldn't go on vacation”, meaning, I guess, that Karen, Chris and I should have made mom die quicker so that his plans wouldn't be ruined. And then Dale and Shirley left for vacation anyway.

And, of course, the reason they washed their hands of mom's  care was because they were furious that mom was in a nursing home. Why? Because that meant the nursing home was getting a chunk of mom's trust fund, a trust fund that Shirley and Dale would be getting a portion of. More money for mom's care meant less money for them.

And then, with mom literally at death's door, they chose to go on vacation.

As far as I am concerned, Shirley and Dale are nothing less than monsters.  Who you choose to associate with is your decision; however, I am baffled that you would continue to support such despicable people."

I will tell you, I felt a lot better after I let that sucker fly.

*their real names, not the pseudonyms I usually use for them here.  F*ck it.