Sorry for the late post - up late, thinking everything over.
To begin, last year my beautiful daughter passed away age 39 from cancer, her one and only daughter was 8 at the time (now 9). Everyone was of course devastated but we have been grateful to receive a lot of support. I was able to retire and we have been looking after our lovely granddaughter after school every night, usually 3.30 - 6.30. 2/3 nights we will make dinner for our son-in-law so they stay later.
Now son-in-law has for various reasons decided to move away from London to Brighton, he is Swiss so his family are all still there (we are Italian but moved to the UK 25 years ago). He feels that being able to sell the large family home (purchased with the intention of being filled with children) will give his a fresh start he needs, allow him to invest money for his daughter (the life insurance covered the mortgage and school fees until she is 18, but won’t leave anything for after that) so she can purchase a home and travel. He didn’t have anywhere in mind, he is a doctor but predominantly works in private practice and has been offered a job in Brighton. He thinks the seaside will also offer his daughter a lovely childhood.
Not long after putting his house on the market it sold and he has had his offer accepted on a house in Brighton, he intends to move our granddaughter to a new school in the next term.
Now we live in London too, our house is too large for us and expensive to run. We have been discussing a bungalow/ground floor flat for a few years now as it should give us some security as we age. We also live near our son and 2 other grandchildren who are a little older at 10 and 12. Our other daughter has no children and lives in Italy.
For various reasons my husband and I think we should move. Initially we were going to go home to Italy for retirement but now with our granddaughter needing us more than ever it seems better that we too move to Brighton. The seaside would make for a nice retirement. We could get a flat over looking the sea and still have money left to potentially buy a holiday home in Italy that we could use in the school holidays with our granddaughter and as she gets older we would be able to decide if we wanted to stay in Brighton or move home full time.
Being there for our granddaughter and our son-in-law is also important to us, for our granddaughter we think it’s culturally important. Of course her dad speaks to her in French exclusively and before she passed her mum spoke to her in Italian exclusively (they both spoke both languages so they could understand) and of course nursery and school is all English. But now we are the only ones who can speak to her in Italian always (her dad speaks some Italian but isn’t fluent and prefers to speak French in his own home which is understandable). I also feel we have values, customs and culture to pass on.
Also practical support such as school pick up and club runs.
We mentioned to our son who lives locally and he thinks we shouldn’t move. Since moving to England 25 years ago we have only ever lived in London. We would lose out on time with our other grandchildren (they come to ours after school sometimes and lots on the weekend). He also feels that it’s not fair that one person decides to move and everyone’s life gets uprooted but my son doesn’t support the move in general and thinks disrupting granddaughters life more is a negative.
It really has me overthinking, I don’t know what to do? I love London and Brighton seems lovely and ideally nothing would have ever changed but this is the situation we are faced with and I think our granddaughter should be our priority in this instant as she does not have anyone else.
AIBU to think we should move even if it upsets our son?