Feeling a little down at the minute and looking for some advice in how to manage the situation. Trying to be as vague as possible without missing out crucial details so please bear with me.
I was contemplating visiting a very elderly relative who lives a five hour drive from myself as they are now too old to make the journey themselves. I am very close to this relative. However, my estranged family (think childhood abuse) randomly turn up to this relatives house without calling first. This relative is aware of the estrangements and the reasons why but has to remain in contact (even though they don’t want to) for reasons I shall not go into on this post.
I have not seen these estranged relatives in fifteen years and have since had my own children. My children would be visiting my elderly relative with me as they love them dearly and have a very close bond with them. My only issue is there is no saying whether these estranged relatives would turn up and seeing them and my children realising they exist would cause a whole load of problems and raise questions my eldest child (ds6) is not old enough to know the answers too yet and would cause a lot of unresolved trauma to rear its ugly head with myself.
I am also unsure how said relatives would react as they have been known to become very angry whenever I have been mentioned by the family I do have contact with as they feel I shouldn’t have contact with any of my family even though they were the problem.
if you have gotten this far thank you. I guess my question is what would you do in this situation? Would you go to visit your elderly relative who otherwise you wouldn’t be able to see? Leave the kids at home? Or stick to regular phone calls?