To not visit my very elderly grandad?

[HarveytheWhale]

Potted history: my grandad is the father of my dad, who was completely absent from my life til my late teens, then broke my heart by moving hundreds of miles away just when we were connecting and starting a relationship. There was a lot more to it than that, including him being aloof and hurtful in things he said sometimes. I haven’t spoken to him in years. I don’t have contact with my mum or that side of my family due to abuse of every single kind when I was a child.

So. My grandad and I have maintained some kind of contact over the years- letters and cards here and there, emails, and meet ups a few times. He is now in an elderly people’s home about an hour from me. I’ve gone up there twice to visit but it takes me a lot of psyching myself up to be able to go. His side of the family, all his children and my cousins and aunts etc are all really close, and there’s photos of them around his place and it devastates me that I’m the odd one out who never got to have that. He’s fine to talk to but the fact that I have no contact with his son makes me feel awkward (despite him always being respectful of it). My aunt lives around the corner from him and she blows hot and cold with me. I saw her a year ago and she was all keen to meet up again but then nothing. The whole situation is just so wrought with emotion that I find dipping my toe in that family really hard.

because he is so old now (90s) and is something of a ticking time bomb due to a health issue, I keep feeling this urgency to go and visit, but then I get really anxious and can’t find it in me to go. It’s stressing me out.

Any advice would be very welcome.

If it has been a while and you are worried about his age/health then I would force myself to go.
It's done then, no guilt, selfie on your phone and knowledge you did a nice thing, if not the best thing, for you. Resets the clock. Be kind to yourself x 💐

This.

You could have that selfie printed, framed and posted to him within a week. And I'm sure he'd be delighted to get that in the post!

When my MIL went into a care home which was near where she lived, but 2-3 hours away from her daughter and me (sadly my husband had died by that point) we went to town in photos of the family. We were only too aware that as her dementia progressed, she soon wouldn't know us. So one of my daughters made a multi photo frame of pictures of each member of the family, and the other made a photo book for her/for the carers to read to her. My SIL framed another load of photos.

We didn't really think to include people outside our two families, so given the lack of relationship with the other side of the family, I can see how you might have been missed off it was his daughter who did all the photographs.

No he wasn’t in contact at all. I think I first spoke to him when I was in my early 20s, and actually it was his wife I was writing to at that point. After she died a few years went by and then he wrote to me. I think I’ve met him a total of 5 times in my life.

He probably didn't put the photos in his room, go visit, take a photo of the two of you and if the visit isn’t too distressing, visit again and give him the photo of the two of you , put it in a frame in his room, it sounds like he did his best which was a lot better than his son

You can’t confidently say anything because you can’t see inside his mind.

I'd absolutely go. But only you can make that call.

Life can be uncomfortable and it tests us, pushes us, and I believe that's how we grow.

Family is hard work but I will put myself out for them and at times it's selfish and at times selfless. I'd go because that's my grandad and I understand nobody is perfect and people get it wrong. I'm okay with that and I couldn't give a shit about photos of me, because the positive impact on him might be greater than the negative on me. So I'd just go.

”Life can be uncomfortable and it tests us, pushes us, and I believe that's how we grow.”

This may be true if you experienced a regular upbringing, OP was abandoned by her F and abused by her M. I don’t think we should be encouraging her to push past her well developed boundaries to visit a man who only wrote a few letters to her as an adult.

Thank you for this. It does feel a bit like people are comparing my situation with that of a well-developed grandparent and child relationship.

whenever I go to see him it makes me sad. It’s just the little things that get mentioned- last time he said about how my dad had got into crypto investments and how that’s so like him to do something like that. And I just thought, well I have no bloody idea. I don’t know my dad barely at all. And then there’s all the talk of this cousin got married and how nice the wedding was, and I didn’t even know the cousin had got married because I’ve always been outside of the family. It just hurts. The whole thing. I ache to have family members who care and to feel part of something like that, and I was denied it. There were times I would send Christmas cards to my aunts and stuff on that side and not even get one back. I gave up in the end. It’s like they’re all in this lovely bubble and I’m rejected over here. So yes he may have written me some letters and cards here and there, and even visited me once, but the whole situation with family for me is just heart rending. Nobody ever really wanted to make an effort. In my mums family nobody wanted to protect me from abuse. I can’t tell you what all that does to wreck a person. I’ve been to such dark places it’s a miracle I’m still here.

So going to see him isn’t as straight forward at people think.