Sigh.
I’m having a really shit time of it with everything going wrong around me and my defences are down which is why I’m posting about something I ordinarily wouldn’t ask for help with.
So, my mother has recently been diagnosed with cancer. I have a brother (lives several hours’ flight away) who decided his reaction to this was to go on holiday. Not surprising given his history of avoiding difficult issues. Since diagnosis there have been stays at hospital and now I am looking after her at home. This means I am away from my own family, including my son for the first time which has been very difficult, especially given he has recently started pushing me away in favour of his father who has historically left 99% of the parenting to me. Upsetting. But that’s another thread.
Said brother has barely bothered to check on mum since diagnosis. Then as soon as she was readmitted to hospital abruptly went off on holiday again. He had previously said he was unable to come and “help” because he had no time off work left.
He called today to say he had spoken to mum and she’d been short with him. He was pissed off and wanted reassurance from me that he was still the golden boy, I suppose. I asked him how his back-to-back holidays were, he accused me of being snarky then abruptly hung up.
Seems he (must have) felt guilted into booking a trip over as soon as he got off the phone to me as my mum called to tell me he’d called her back with his itinerary much to her surprise. It’s all a bit too little too late and my mum’s upset. So am I. Yet I know him well enough to know he’s going to make me the enemy in all of this to avoid dealing with his own shortcomings.
I’m too exhausted to deal with this on top of everything else that’s going on. Need some help with some simple, to-the-point ways to shut him down when he launches his attack so it ends there and then and doesn’t affect my mum or me. I’m not copping the brunt of his misdirected feelings of inadequacy this time.