Namechanged (you'll see why), I'll try and keep this short and sweet and really didn't know where to post this but feel I need some perspective, and that perspective would be better from people outside this situation who I don't have to see every day! Please be sensitive with this though, it is a really difficult subject - but I felt I was being a fraud puting it in Relationships and felt it was too important to call it 'Chat'.
Here goes.... my grandfather was a serial, long term sexual abuser who abused me and other family members. He abused me over a period of 3 years as a child when I used to regularly stay with gp (3 times a week) as my father was a farmer and my mother did nightshifts. When all was revelaed and my DPs went to the police and court (he was convicted for 14 years) my grandmother swore she never knew it was happening. However still to this day i do not believe her, I believe he was a wife beater, an emotional abuser and she was terrified of him. Him going to prison was a huge relief for her and she turned her back on him. I cannot get over not believing her, she would get up early and knew the my Grandad would always want his 'special cuddles' with me in the morning (this was always when the abuse happened). She would never come up stairs and check on me, never call me down etc and every time I tried to get up early with her, she would send me back to bed and say I had to stay there till 7.30am. There was even one incident when she told me off for trying to hide away some knickers in my bag to take home which, after a particularly nasty incident were bloody, and she would wash them before I went home and told me I wasn't to tell my parents as they would be mad at me. I remember this clearly and it has stayed with me.
My Nan is lying in hospital this evening dying. She is unlikely to make it through the night. In the past 8 years I have seen her twice. I have always meant to go and see her more and try and put the past behind us and understand that she was just a very frightened victim herself. My father has tried to maintain a relationship with her but is abroad at the moment and extremely upset that he cannot be with her. My older siblings have gone to the hospital, but I have choosen not too. I feel like a fraud if I go, but then I keep thinking she is dying, surely now is the time for forgiveness. I don't know what I feel, I keep trying to work out if I am sad or feeling guilty and the only image that keeps coming to my mind is her telling me off for having dirty knickers. In many other ways in my early childhood she was a lovely nan.
I am so confused and trying to make sense of this, part of me thinks have I posted this in AIBU to get a tirade of abuse for being an awful grand-daughter as I almost feel I deserve that. I just cannot face it and cannot face dealing with all these thoughts shooting round my head.... 