Families, huh?

[TiredOfBeingNumber84OnAnyList]

I have someone in my family who doesn't really give a toss for her parents.

Both of them are retired and have had to go to hospital (the incidents occurred months apart) and will spend a long time recovering from their predicaments. She has upset my mum by screaming and swearing at her over the phone as she was not informed directly of her mothers' predicament. I had to take over the phone call to try to stop the row from escalating.

There has been another incident this week. I know my mum will probably be awake into the early hours trying to make sense of this womans' actions.

This womans' mum is the nicest, most lovely and funny woman I've known. I just can't understand it.

I've spent about 20 mins telling my mum not to worry about this woman. That she's selfish and won't ever think about anyone else but herself and not to expect that she will ever be there to support her own parents.

Of course, even though I am trying to tell my mum not to let the situation upset her, my stomach is in knots and it does make me angry that our lovely relative has to have such a sorry excuse for a daughter.

You say... "She has upset my mum by screaming and swearing at her over the phone as she was not informed directly of her mothers' predicament"

why wasn't she told directly about her mother's predicament?

You should speak to her and tell her that it is not your mother's place to keep her informed about her own parents. Surely her other parent could have informed her, or the hospital? This is grossly unfair on your mum.

This is too cryptic for me.

I know it's cryptic, the trouble is some of her actions seem so bizarre illogical that I really shouldn't reveal all of the story.

So was she not informed because there's some concern about her ability to care for her parents?

beaniesteve - she had broken contact with her parents and the only way we could inform her was to tell my lovely relatives' grandchild.

I'd understand it if she was only like this with her dad. He has an inherited hot-headedness which quite a few of my family suffer from.

My mum is very close to my lovely relative so she felt a duty to try to keep her daughter informed.

She has the ability to care, she has just chosen not to.

It is a horrid situation, we live about an hour and a half away from lovely relative, her daughter lives about 20 mins away, yet my mum and siblings visit about once a month.

Her mum may seem lovely to her, but who knows what happened when she was a kid, who knows what she blames her mum for. If her dad was horrible to her, and her mum did nothing about it ...

That being said, you can't actually fix this problem, I'd try to come up with a way to stay out of it entirely or minimise how much I was acting as a go between ...

i was going to say about her mum being a lovely, nice and funny woman. A whole community thought that about my nan, and this was the image she projected, but the reality in the closed unit of the family was very different indeed.
I'm not saying this is the case here, and with such sketchy details it's hard to read more into the situation but there is a reason this relative is behaving the way she does.
Unfortunately life doesn't always give us answers, and you may just have to accept how she is dealing with this and take the appropriate action to protect yourselves from her actions.
Sorry you are going through this, i've dealt with a lot of family strife over the years (i have a HUGE family) and it never gets any easier, especially when you see people you care about being hurt emotionally.