I have been thinking about this for a while. I (and my immediate family) seem to have problems with the older generations of our families. I can not help thinking is it us?
Growing up, my mother was a barely functioning alcoholic. My dad facilitated this. There was violence. I felt such shame and such fear never knowing what I walking home into. She used to shout, yell, soil and wet herself, smash things up. As time went on and I left home I went extremely low contact with her. I met my husband, we had a child together. I knew never to leave my child alone with my mother and continued low contact. My mother died when my child was about 5 years old, probably by suicide. My father had died some years before. At my mother's funeral my aunt and uncle (from my dad's side) made it clear that they thought I was an awful daughter, I have never seen them since. My brother dealt with my mother in a very different way and allowed her contact with his son.
My husband also grew up in an abusive household, there was social services involvement as he rarely went to school, and didn't wash or wear clean clothes. He had no clean clothes to wear, and at one point there was no bathroom in his family home. When I met him his mother was single after a long abusive relationship. I tried very hard for over 20 years to get on with her, and facilitated a close relationship with my child. We argued when she was opening racist or nasty, that was my line in the sand, but apart from that we pottered on. I knew that she criticised us all, she criticised and lied about everyone in her family.
Around 6 years ago we had an important celebration. My MIL turned up and was opening racist about a friend of mine, to their face, and moaned about the venue, the food, everything. It was awful and spoilt the occasion. A little while later she became very ill and became bedbound. Her behaviour rapidly got worse. She called my dd a "fucking cunt" on more than one occasion, my husband a thief and me an ugly bitch. All to our faces. We all decided individually that was it, we couldn't keep a relationship going. We haven't seen her since then. Two out of 3 of her other grandchildren have also chosen to go no contact with her for other reasons.
Which brings me to the present time. We have been in very close contact with my DH's aunt, his mother's sister. There have been periods between his aunt and his mother of no contact. They haven't got an easy relationship. However my dh is very fond of her. About 6 weeks ago the aunt had a hip replacement. My DH and my DD both went and stayed with her to help her. A lot of help was obviously needed, it's a horrible operation especially for someone in their 70s. They really facilitated her being able to leave the hospital and recover at home, there was no-one else able to do it. Between them they spent a month with her. Her son came and stayed for a day in that time, and my DD ended up having to clear up after him, he mowed the grass. DH's aunt got more and more bad tempered. Taking things for granted, ordering them about, being rude about them openly to friends visiting etc. I went for a few days and it was awful, she was rude about how much I was eating (genuinely not a huge amount, I have lost 9 stone recently), criticised my DH doing agreed work in the house around putting in hand rails etc, trying to get us to wait on her perfectly able friends hand and foot as well as her. As we left she acknowledged she was bad tempered but no actual apology.
She now wants one of us to go back and stay with her again. None of us can face it. She is able to move around with a frame but definitely could do with support. We haven't said no, nor yes. But it has got me thinking - are we as a family just having a lot of bad luck with our relatives or is there something wrong with the way we react? I genuinely can't work it out.
Apologies for the long post, I wanted to try and give as much info as possible.