Is it time to let this go?

[2lsinllama]

My grandmother died about a year ago. She was a bully. She only liked men/boys so myself and my mother never really made the grade for her. The last straw for me was when she said something about boys being better in front of my niece- I went NC with her from then on. When she died I didn’t feel anything, never cried etc.
But now it seems that her narrative is being rewritten by my mother and aunts (all of whom were treated in the same way).
Is this just what happens? Never speak ill of the dead? I can see that a lot of the issues both myself and my brother have, even now, come from her and it makes me so angry that this picture is being painted of her. DH says I need to just let it go - he pointed out how thrilled she would be if this caused a row between me and my mother. But I don’t know how to get rid of all these feelings.

There's a middle ground. You can both hold on to your narrative and accept that others will find it easier to find a different narrative. You won't get the to recognise yours.by having an argument.

I think people do rewrite history when people die. I can't count the number of times people have spoken about the "tragedy" of my dickhead, abusive father's death.

This sounds like something a therapist would be best placed to work through with you, if that's a possibility.

I'm sorry you're going through this pain. Bear in mind that your mother and her sisters will also be dealing with painful emotions. Just because they're acting like everything is fine re their mother, doesn't mean it actually is. Maybe, now she's gone, they feel guilty about resenting her toxic behaviour , and so they pretend the behaviour never happened in order to lessen the guilt .

It sounds like a big exercise in denial, and while that may not be a healthy way to deal with the situation - and it's not yours - you probably won't do yourself any favours by trying to talk them out of it.

Leave them to it as they probably take comfort from doing so. And yes, if you feel it’s difficult maybe take up some therapy as it might be useful

Yeah - to a lot of people, the dead are saints. It's how they cope with their grief. Try not to engage with their bullshit.

I find that keeping a journal helps. Get it all out of your head and in a book, that's your time to think about it. The rest of the time try not to think about it.

Walk away, honestly it doesn't deserve your energy, your DH is right
Walk away everytime they come up with this shit
I have it too , I get up and go home when it starts

It’s not a never speak ill of the dead so much as grappling with the conflicting emotions when your abusive parent(s) die. Think a little about how you are sheltered from your grandmother by your mother, aunties- an entire generation is the buffer between you and her. You had a mother that loved and valued you which your mother did not have. So while you felt nothing when your grandmother died, did not cry and so on, I can guarantee it will not have been the same for your mum an aunties.

When you have/had abusive parents it wasn’t bad 100% of the time, and there is a tendency to hold on to the moments that were good, few and far between, because it makes you feel like maybe you were loved just a tiny bit after all. This follows you into adulthood and after they die. Its a psychological survival tactic tbh, because when it’s your parents you cannot focus on the bad stuff because that makes you feel unwanted, the worst daughter on the planet, a complete fuck up…do you naturally avoid going to those memories and those thoughts.

As a grandchild, you’re an entire generation removed, going to those bad memories doesn’t completely undermine your sense of self worth because you had a loving parent more than counteracting their influence.

I think you need to have more empathy for your mum and aunties.

While I agree with this to a point, the older women in the family did somewhat buy into the men are better crap and my mother did know how it made me (and my brother) feel. I guess I do hold a bit of resentment towards my mother for not stopping the way I was treated compared to my brother. So I’m not sure I’d call them a buffer exactly.

This is so insightful and true.

I think you have to just quietly hold onto your own narrative and be confident in it but not expect others to come around to your point of view.

My father died two years ago. He was moderately well known and incredibly charismatic with a massive network of friends and a lot of people thought he was the dog’s bollocks.

He was also serially unfaithful but to my mum and his previous wife, he was a heavy drinker and irascible to the point of being abusive to his kids at times. All his kids have resentments and issues relating to how he was a father to us. Some fairly extreme. One of my siblings went no contact with him and didn’t attend his funeral.

I still receive emails more or less once a week from well meaning people telling me what a wonderful man and father he was.

I have long since accepted that their narrative is theirs and mine is mine. Their views are incomplete and flawed but he wasn’t their father and they are entitled to their perspectives.

You can’t change the way people perceive another person.

Thank you - this is very helpful. It’s also what DH has said!

Maybe they are just not letting her toxicity remain being bitter chips away at you and does no good

Maybe your mother adopted these views subconsciously because she thought it might bring her closer to her own mother - bring her the connection she must have known she needed & was missing out on? "If I can show her I think like her, she'll love me more"

Not saying that excuses your mother's treatment of you, just that it might help you to understand.

I expect that everyone is doing their best to grieve. You can't tell other people how to think or feel. You can only control what goes on in your own head.

By buffer I meant your mother did not treat you that way and you would have been raised by your mother. So you are one step removed.

I would guess that they (your mum and aunties) didn’t buy into it so much as had to put up with it. Otherwise, wouldn’t you have said your mum raised you to think that boys are best too?

I understand the bit about disappointment in your mother not challenging your grandmother, but she may have been afraid of her own mother.

You can still grieve for a mother who didn't value you. Maybe all their lives they held out hope, as offspring do, that their dysfunctional mother would finally see their worth. And now that small sliver of hope is dead along with the mother. So it makes their grief a little complex.

Add into that, people do tend to gloss over the shitty things the deceased do, so there's an element of that in the mix.

And finally, there's a whole generation of conditioning for them. They learned from the knee their worth and it's been reinforced throughout their lives. Some of that is very complex to unpick, and even harder in a groupthink situation, and also when it's so ingrained for so many years - they just might not ever have the abilty to unravel the dysfunction even if they wanted to.

I slagged off a (very) close relative actually at their wake and a whole bunch of other joined in, saying things like 'we didn't want to say anything before you did'.