|
In response to
"Family drama is the real-world Kobayashi Maru. -- nm"
by
David
|
My parents just bicker like cats and dogs all day. It was all just mild entertainment until my brother’s health started factoring in.
Posted by
Mop🧹 (aka rburriel)
Dec 2 '23, 23:25
|
I think I’ve mentioned before that my dad can barely hear and my mom definitely has short term memory issues. So conversations between the two are epic. I’ve been playing referee all week. I’m pretty dang chill (there’s something to unpack here, as I’m not sure how I became this way) but my brother doesn’t have a zen bone in his body. He visits once/week for mom to cook him a meal but he’s gone in less than an hour.
My dad’s all worked up about my brother’s health and tells me brother needs to reduce his stress. I state, matter of fact, that coming to see parents elevates his stress, and they’re both dumbfounded. How is this not obvious to them? He leaves in an hour. I ask dad why that is, and dad pins it on nephew. “Because nephew wants to leave right away!” We were all together in the house tonight and nephew just sat in the corner playing with his phone. Never said a word. And when brother visits alone, without nephew? He still leaves in an hour? Dad doesn’t want to hear it.
Dad’s got it in for nephew. Tells me the kid is autistic. When he doesn’t like a meal, he just throws it off the table, I’m told. I ask him when the last time was that this happened. “Just the other day!” I know nephew used to have behavioral issues, but that was maybe 5 years ago. Kid got special ed. He’s been really sweet for a long time. I visited brother and nephew for lunch the other day. We sat down, kid’s telling me - of his own free will! - about school, about how he’s on the honor roll, about how he loves English class. Kids open up to me. At the restaurant tonight, Mom’s pestering him constantly, telling him to eat more, tapping him on the shoulder, mumbling things to him. Kid rolls with it, totally cool, totally sweet. I’m angry that the kid is getting scapegoated and the behavior of my parents is elevating my brother’s stress, and Mom and Dad don’t want to hear any of it. Brother needs some time to relax, and being away from work and spending more time with my parents is going to be the opposite of that.
I’m trying my damndest to “fix” things while I’m here. Mom and Dad need to be in a home, but they can’t have a conversation with each other about it without it spiraling out of control, so I sit there and listen to the two of them and say things like “What I’m hearing you say is…” There’s little things. Dad has an electric fireplace but he can’t light it with a remote control he has. He’s clearly clawed at the thing trying to get it open. I open it for him, then go to the store and get him a battery. Fixed. Brother could have done that, but he can’t cope with it, so instead he listens to the complaints until he can’t any more and leaves. Then there’s the mysterious alarm at 9:48 PM every night. Apparently every night the phone rings. Sometimes it’s the house phone. Sometimes it’s the mobile phone. They’ve actually gone to the mobile store and bothered the guy there FOUR TIMES about this. I check the phone. There isn’t an alarm set. So I wait until 9:48 at which point this shitty little travel alarm clock they have on a dresser starts beeping. I turn it off. Fixed. Dad insists it was the phone! Nope. They’ve had it for two months since they came back from a trip, and they’ve been hearing the alarm for… yup, you guessed it, two months. And they’ve been telling my brother about it for two months. Again, he can’t cope. He just needed to sit there until 9:48 but this is killing him. I need everyone to listen to reason. They’re going to fucking kill each other.
|
Responses:
|
