The Upsetting News Thread

[evcake]

Poor bunny. But you gave her the best life a bunny could have, I bet.

[Bether6074]

I'm so sorry Linda to hear about your rabbit. Animals are a gift and always offer unconditional love. My condolences.

Our family has been in the middle of this awful situation with my autistic brother for the past 4 1/2 months. The place where he stays has medicated him so much that he is now very addicted to the drug Librium. Every time they try to wean him off of it he has seizures and becomes agitated with self-injurious-behavior... He's been in and out of the hospital (back in again now) and chained to the bed. It's been terrible. My other brother has been lobbying hard for him and is in process of obtaining guardianship. Ambulances have refused to come and get him and everything. What a mess. We're currently now looking for a place that can handle him while he is detoxing.

[Aquarius]

I'm so sorry to hear that, Bether. I hope your brother can get the help he needs.

[Asso]

Our family has been in the middle of this awful situation with my autistic brother for the past 4 1/2 months. The place where he stays has medicated him so much that he is now very addicted to the drug Librium. Every time they try to wean him off of it he has seizures and becomes agitated with self-injurious-behavior... He's been in and out of the hospital (back in again now) and chained to the bed. It's been terrible. My other brother has been lobbying hard for him and is in process of obtaining guardianship. Ambulances have refused to come and get him and everything. What a mess. We're currently now looking for a place that can handle him while he is detoxing.

That's terrible. TERRIBLE! Really, Bether, you can't even imagine how much I'm with you. FOR MANY, MANY REASONS!
I hope, immensely, things will be good, for you and for your family.

[JadziaKathryn]

That's just dreadful. I hope you can find a good, non-medicine-happy place for him to detox.

[enterprikayak]

Good luck with that Bether. I'm glad there's concerned family who can help.

[panyasan]

Hopefully your family will find a solution soon. Wishing you, your brother and your family all the best, Brether.

[Aquarius]

My grandma (father's side) is going into hospice. She's had Alzheimer's, and now she has pneumonia. They think she aspirated her food or something and became an infection.

I am not close to my father's side of the family. I was once, but...well, it's all...weird. My father died before I was a year old. My grandparents lived nearby until I was 6, then they moved to Kentucky. I saw them every couple of years on visits, there were cards, letters, and phone calls.

My uncle John was a truck driver so I never got to see him much, even when he lived in Michigan. I loved him, he loved me, we just didn't see each other much.

Grandpa died of cancer when I was 15. At that point, Grandma was contemplating moving back to Michigan. I wish she did, because this is when the nightmare began.

Grandma got a boyfriend...who took her for everything she had. And she gave it willingly. A lot of that was money that was supposed to send me to college.

The last time I saw my Grandma, I was 18, graduating from high school. The cards and letters continued for a while, but got less frequent. I heard from her again when I was 21...and then again when I was 25. That was the last letter I got from her. My mom and I just figured she was way into her boyfriend or whatever. I knew he was a creep and a con artist, but there was nothing I could do...I fully expected to see them on America's Most Wanted or Unsolved Mysteries or something.

So a few years ago, my uncle's wife contacts my mom and says "Oh, by the way, J
(my uncle) died." There was no funeral, and a couple of weeks had passed. They only lived thirty minutes from my house. Um...WHO DOES THAT??? Who calls and says "oh by the way, your brother in law died"???

That wasn't the weirdest part. B (J's wife) mentions that she and J had brought my grandma and her sister up to Michigan like three years prior and that THEY had also been living a mere half hour from where I live. At that point, both had Alzheimer's. I never visited, my feelings still hurt and everything from years of no contact, etc. Plus, they probably wouldn't have known me any way. And I was angry at B, and even J even though he was already gone, for not making a simple phone call and letting us know that my grandma was back in Michigan. Again, WHO DOES THAT???

So my mom gets a phone call from B yesterday, informing her that Grandma is going into hospice. But of course, it get's weirder: B had moved Grandma and her sister to a nursing home in West Virginia (where that side of my family is originally from) because Grandma's sister said she wanted to go home to die. That's fine, except the way B tells it, the place they were in is a hole. Grandma's sister died a couple of years ago (nice phone call we didn't get about THAT, either), and Grandma's been there alone ever since. Mom said that B even acted surprised that she didn't know any of this. My reaction: um, we don't read minds, so if B didn't tell us, HOW THE HELL WERE WE SUPPOSED TO KNOW???

And had we known, I might've enlisted my mother's help in getting Grandma moved back to Michigan.

And I'm really, really not ever going to see my Grandma again. That last visit at my high school graduation will really be it. I was 18 then. I'm nearly 40 now.

This hurts on so many levels.

[Alelou]

This hurts on so many levels.

Well, of course it does. I'm so sorry about that.

[CX]

Family can do some weird, inconsiderate, and hurtful things to each other.

[Aquarius]

Family can do some weird, inconsiderate, and hurtful things to each other.

Ain't it the truth! I haven't even gone into how B's been looking for money...

And thanks, Alelou.

[Alelou]

Well, there's certainly no reason to feel you owe them any money after that history.

That takes a lot of nerve, really.

[Aquarius]

Oh, I don't owe her a damn thing. It's crazy stuff like...when my dad died, my grandparents bought six cemetery lots, so we've got a family plot. Two were for the grandparents, two were for my parents, and two were for me and whoever I end up with, if I wanted them. B starts talking ot my mom about how she wants to "hurry up and get those sold." Her big idea is that she's gonna have Grandma cremated (which is fine by us), and then bury her urn on top of where Grandpa is, and sell the plots that were for Grandma, Mom, me, and the last one. Mom and I are like "WTF???" So Mom said she'd talk to me about it...and she did...and I told Mom that B can kiss my ass. B is facing a foreclosure, and she's looking for money. She has Power of Attorney for my grandma's affairs, but as far as we know, after Grandma goes, ownership of those plots goes to me...and *i* say everything stays as is.

Not to mention, my mother is the one that purchased the grave stone, her name is even on it, and to sell those two plots, it would require moving/destroying the stone. I'm like "Uhhhhh.....no." But we know B just wants the money from it.

[Alelou]

B seems to have followed her own self-interest in this all along, so that fits.

At least it's not that cemetery in Chicago where the manager and her cohorts were digging up old graves and dumping the bodies and headstones so they could resell the plots to other families for cash. Now all these families are freaking out about just where the heck their loved ones are.

[Aquarius]

Yeah, that's pretty terrible. I don't know what I'd do if I had to deal with all of that in the midst of all this.

I have a friend from college who's gone on to become a lawyer. I'm going to call him tomorrow, make sure B can't do anything without my say-so, and possibly challenge her power of attorney, on the grounds that my mother and I have been deliberately kept out of the loop in regards to my grandma's whereabouts, and the lousy track record with letting us know that people died--at least in the situations were I didn't stand in the way of her getting money.

There is also the issue of, there are things that belonged to both my uncle and my father when they were boys, like train sets and stuff, that my mother knows were supposed to go to me. B has given all that stuff to her grandson...who is not related to my uncle; B had all her children from a previous marriage. So, not that I'd want to take this stuff back from a little boy and disappoint him, but it would've been nice if I'd been consulted (I probably would've said yes if she'd asked in the first place), but on principle now I feel I should be compensated.