God I said something awful on purpose to my grandfather

You're misreading my posts. I'm sorry.
The OP clearly is feeling guilty and I'm hoping she'll feel less so. Without having to dance preemptively on anyone's grave.
How much time have you spent in care homes and so on or with properly geriatric people? 'Showing off' a card means that someone remembers you're not dead, someone in the outside world. It matters humanly. Like in prison. I'm not saying any slate is wiped clean. I'm saying that unmerited kindness can be a healing way of saying goodbye. For the OP. Goodbye to the whole past of mess.

OP needs to forgive herself , end of. As for that old cunt, I hope he dies a horrible death alone, or even better is getting abused by the staff at the home, NOW THAT, would be poetic justice.

It's a fucking joke isn't it?

Another poster (LastNight1Dreamt1WentToManderleyAgain) has suggested that she sends him a present and a card to apologise and another (Mebebecat) has accused her of elder abuse. What the fuck is wrong with people?

@DenimTurtle many well put words here. I just wanted to add that my gran died a year ago this month. My mum has badly suffered the last year with all the things she didn’t say. She felt she left it too late, didn’t want to say anything when she was old and weak. She’s gone and here is my mum still really struggling, maybe by getting it off your chest you have saved yourself from that regret. I hope so.
Im sure he was sobbing now, he is vulnerable and weak and knows that really if anyone he treated badly wanted to they could overpower him easily.

Oh my god, are you serious? She shouted at him once after years of abuse and torment when she was a child. It wasn't elder abuse at all! She reacted to him losing his temper. He should be in prison for what he did to the OP.

Being old and dependent on carers doesn't wipe the slate clean for a child abuser who abused and tormented his grand-daughter for years.

I can't believe that you are telling OP to send him a card and present to show off to other service users. Show off about what exactly? That he managed to abuse his grand-daughter for years with zero consequences?

You sound sorry for the old monster. Please do not make the OP feel more guilty. She should feel no guilt at all.

@Mebebecat

Calling an arsehole an arsehole doesn't turn into elder abuse just because the arsehole is old.

HTH.

I hope for these particular monsters it is terrible and I certainly would not be showing them kindness.

Actually, you were brave. I'm still uncompromisingly polite to my abuser, and with each false appeasement a little more of me dies. What you said may have been a spontaneous outburst, but it came out because you've worked hard to build an identity removed from that child he hurt. Well done to you.

You feel guilty because you have a form of Stockholm syndrome. Like me, you grew up knowing that your abuser and his feelings were the most important thing in the world, and that it was your job to moderate your behaviour to keep him even. So now you reflexively feel responsible for his sadness. We both know that you aren't. I don't have any answers or solutions, because you're already way braver than me.

Just, don't feel bad. And get some therapy.

No, I'm saying make one kind gesture, from a safe distance, to draw a line in one very particular case, when the OP who's been genuinely and terribly hurt as a child needs to find peace with her past. Revenge doesn't bring peace! And being really really old is terrible. I didn't understand how terrible till the last few years of seeing some family members (yes including directly abusive ones) age.

So one outburst to her abusive grandfather who tormented and abused her for years when she was a child makes her as bad as him?

That's some fucked up thinking. Your lack of kindness and empathy is staggering.

I am really serious if the person in question is old as in senile-old, crumbling-old, hands trembling may not be able to feed themselves soon or already can't... rather than 'old' as in their 60s and a bit creaky. The abuse is no longer happening. And very old age makes us not who we were. Hurt people hurt people. The whole thing about flashbacks is that they force the past into the present. Being triggered is an excuse but 'revenge' on an old person is no kind of triumph. The cycle must break. The OP sounds upset. And like she's evolving out of the revenge dynamic trap that so many of you are exulting in. I truly wish her well and better.

Op it was brave of you to say what you did. I’m also waving pom-poms and I hope you never have to see the evil fucker ever again. And if you do, I hope you say a great deal more to him. I think anyone who doesn’t feel the greatest amount of sympathy for you is either someone who has never ever experienced this sort of trauma and therefore can’t begin to put themself in your shoes, or someone who is emotionally very thick. Probably both.

it takes a lot of grit to do what you did. Adult abusers, in my experience at least, condition the abused to be ever so good, and oooo to feel ever so bad if we stick up for ourselves or speak out. Well done op, you are EVER SO GOOD to have said something to him. Through your thread, and the many brilliant responses, you have also made me feel a whole lot better about a similar relationship in my life, and my reaction to it.

I hope those bad feelings disappear by tomorrow morning. You have done nothing wrong at all, in fact you have done something right here, and you are a good person. Every good karma vibe coming your way; after all, karma is about present acts impacting the future, isn’t it.

Yep that’s right why don’t we all send flowers to all the elderly pedos, rapists, abusers and murders bc after all they’re just poor old men who need someone to wipe their arse for them.

what the actual fuck is this website honestly.

Yep. Send flowers to people who actually deserve them, not abusers.

You’re not serious? Send flowers to a child abuser?

This. 100%.
Who the hell spits on a child????? That shows you the sort of person he is.

You’ve done nothing wrong, Op, you’re entitled to state your feelings to your abuser. Look after yourself, be kind to yourself.

@DenimTurtle YANBU - I so wish I’d had the guts to confront my abuser. You did the right thing.

Don;t berate yourself.

His sobbing was not remorse his sobbing was his own cowardly self pity.

Onwards and upwards for you and carry on being the kind wonderful person you are.

i ended up caring for my abusive father when he was elderly- it was because i felt obliged not because I loved him.
do not feel you should do something when your heart tell you you otherwise

Just to add, I have a 'step' dad who was/is a controlling and abusive man to my mum. He's now in a care home ten minutes from me. I have not visited once. Mum has never asked and I wouldn't even to support her. He has ruined her life, or a good chunk of it. He's made his bed as far as I am concerned. I owe him nothing at all. Just glad mum can walk away after he says spiteful vindictive things now. She can go back to her own home and (partly) be free of his coercive nonsense. I mean what do these men expect? What, flowers and wine? Yeah, right. Get the tiny violin out. Not on my bloody watch. If I sound bitter its years of watching mum be bullied into the ground mercilessly.

This is what I was trying to get at in the post I made several pages ago. Which episode was that?

What the actual fuck?

I just watched Expats (on Amazon) and one of the characters confronts her dad (abuser) in hospital and he dies a short time later.

Even though she knows she is justified in what she said, and how she said it in a way to increase the maximum input she was still emotionally floored by her actions. Effectively in that moment she behaved the way that he had done all the other ways which was conflicting.

I hope you can feel better in a while, but in the meantime be kind to yourself.

What was the intention of your grandmother in asking you to go and see him? Did she say that he'd asked to see you?