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My mother-in-law is dying.
Soon.
About 5 months ago she was diagnosed with a brain tumor. The diagnosis came out of the blue. She had some slurred speech and headaches. She was initially diagnosed as having migranes, no big deal. But the slurring didn't go away and further testing was done. She didn't tell her kids about the tentative diagnosis. In fact, she didn't tell them until the night she before she went in to the hospital to attempt to have the tumor resected.
Now, some people would say that mother's try to protect their kids from unpleasant things and what she did would fall in line with that.
But that has never been my mother-in-law's m.o.. She's never been one to include her kids in anything. She walked out on her kids when my husband was 10. Even before that, she was more interested in pursuing her own intersests; often leaving my husband home alone for days on end with his 4 younger sisters and brothers while she went off to get high and "find herself".
My father-in-law wasn't a lot better. He worked out of town, coming back only on weekends long enough to drink a couple cases of Pabst during a Packer's game. His mood swings have me convinced he has been battling un-diagnosed bipolar disorder. For years after she left, my father-in-law hid how bad things were, letting the kids go for days without food in the house during his manic rages.
When we married, my husband had no clue how to be a husband or father, or even be part of a family. It's been an up hill battle for him to learn to be a parent to our children rather than a buddy. Consistency comes hard to him. But he's worked hard at putting everything behind him and pretending it doesn't bother him. He says all he can do is laugh about it, because if he started crying, he'd never be able to stop.
I've bit my tongue along the way. I've never wanted to make waves in the tenous relationship he's had with his parents. So when his mother would call and tell me that I should be doing so and so with my daughters, it was all I could do to not scream at her "how would you know? You ran out and left your 2 daughters to get pregnant when they were teenagers!" I've kept the peace, but I've resented it.
So with the news that his mother was dying, my husband has been thrown in to a tail spin. He's had to give up the hope that his mother will ever be anything more than a part time visitor in his life. I've had to give up hope that my children will ever have a grandmother who would recognize them if they passed on the street.
And now, I'm dealing with the scared young boy who's mother is leaving all over again...
