I have been really trying to stay out of the drama between my sister, my nearly 90 year old authoritative and emotionally abusive dad, and my 21 year old niece.
Niece lives in a 2 bed granny annexe at my dads, rent and bill free. It is not self contained. It has a kitchen, and a toilet with a washbasin. The bathroom is shared with my dad. She is a student, studies very hard and does very well. She easily suffers migraines, so always comes home around 3-4, rests and have a nap, and then she goes out again around 8 pm most evenings to study with her study group. My sister usually spend summer holidays with them, helping with the garden as much as she can, and does her daughters chores while she is away seeing her dad for the holidays.
He is a cantankerous old man, always been in control. He did not want kids, but mum persuaded him, first to get my sister and then 13 years later me. He did not really have much time for us when we grew up, and behaved like a bully especially to my older sister. Mimicking her speech defect, and always biting her head off. She has spent her life walking on eggshells and hiding behind mum. She is an engineer, yet he is always talking down at her like she is some silly woman who knows nothing. She has health issues, scoliosis, arthritis, yet keep pushing her to do hard physical work like pressure-washing the drive, mowing lawn, and browbeaten as she is, she always complies. He is always taking the mickey at how she does things in clumsy ways, and it always end in tears.
Just yesterday all hell broke out because she included a plastic tub which had contained berries for jam making (His berries, won at the local bingo, sister had made jam for him, and cleaned the tub), in a bag with some of my tupperware to give me. The reason? It was not her tub to give a way. It was a principle that needed to be upheld, you dont give away somebody elses posession. So he raged. And she ended up in the annex crying, for the umpteenth time this holiday. She suffers anxiety, and has some mental health problems. Dad knows this.
That was just the background, to explain a little about how he is, and the relations. Niece is just 21, immature in many ways, and can be very naive. She does not care or understand the relationship between her mum and her granddad. She decided to invite a friend to move in to the annex with her, to also live rent free with her. Me and my sister told niece this was not a good idea, Friend would not notice much of dads behaviour, but me and my sister would have to take the hit for this.
Dad is nice and cheerful with Niece, always agrees with her, but rubbishes her behind her back to me and Sister. He always moans and complains about her. She is out too much (she has to go through the house to go out), she is noisy. She does not help enough (She does her laundry, run errands for him and do his shopping, but sometimes she misses items out, but most of the time he forgets that she has been shopping or done laundry). She has too many boyfriends (she is a devout catholic, as is her girl friend ). She leaves the house too early. She wakes him up in the morning, she does not come to look in on him in the morning before she leaves for Uni. Everything is wrong. But he beams at her and never tell HER if anything is wrong.
He rubbishes me to my sister and my niece, and he rubbishes my sister to my Niece and I. There is not a good word to be said about any of us. And if we ever try to talk to him about his shouting, or the issues he brings up to us (about eachothers failings) then he plays the Poor Old Man card, "I cannot deal with discord in my house, I am too old for this. I am always nice and pleasant, and woe is me everybody is so nasty to me" And then he rants about how his confidences are betrayed and how dare we talk to eachother about how rubbish we are.
Now. He has been foul to my sister, more than usual, in the last three weeks since Niece decided Friend is moving in, and he has been telling me that he feels completely taken advantage of, that he does not understand how Niece could even ask him to move a stranger into his home, to his bathroom. It was rude of her, and he did not want it, but could not tell her that because he wanted a good atmosphere in his home and that meant not confronting Niece. But I should NOT tell Niece or sister about this. I felt I could not let this continue, though.
So I spoke to Sister and Niece. Sister was glad she understood why he had been more than usual nasty. Niece went to talk to him, asking him how he really felt about Friend moving in, and he was all "Oh that will be so nice for you, it will be such a bonus to have this great girl in his house".....
I really dont know what to do. It is getting to me. I dont want drama. My sister is calling me several times per week in tears the last two months, and she has now decided I have to come with her when she goes back home as otherwise she will not be able to stop herself from taking too many sleeping pills. The thing with Friend is not the only issue that is causing my Sister to go nuts, it is a whole summer of mental torture, and my Niece who has introduced her new boyfriend, a much older international student, that my sister does not approve of due to big differences in culture and religion.
Not so easy for me to leave my kids for a week to travel half way across the globe. Her threatening suicide is a bi-monthly occurrence at least so I dont really think she will doe something. But what if?
The ONE time I meddled to try make things better and it just blows up even more. I have seriously had enough.