Just to add, my mothers partner has still done nothing to help himself. It was his birthday last week, and I gave him a packet of wet wipes (because he’s so ill he’s been urinating on the seat with near impunity, so she tells me) - Mamie or something, from Aldi, which I’ve heard are top notch. I haven’t even been thanked.

He seems to think she’s his skivvy.

Family entanglements + mystery + intrigue + danger = 0

Baby orangutan = 2

cosmictanya wrote:

Just to add, my mothers partner has still done nothing. It was his birthday last week, and I gave him a packet of wet wipes (because he’s so ill he’s been urinating on the seat with near impunity, so she tells me) - Mamie or something, from Aldi, which I’ve heard are top notch. I haven’t even been thanked.

You're not getting a 'like' for that load of wet wipes.

Nightjar wrote:

cosmictanya wrote:

Just to add, my mothers partner has still done nothing. It was his birthday last week, and I gave him a packet of wet wipes (because he’s so ill he’s been urinating on the seat with near impunity, so she tells me) - Mamie or something, from Aldi, which I’ve heard are top notch. I haven’t even been thanked.

You're not getting a 'like' for that load of wet wipes.

It was a thoughtful and useful birthday gift. He’s never given me anything.

To think, I even considered buying him some absorbent liners when I saw them on offer at the end of the aisle in Sainsbury’s. Tenalady, but not the lady ones. He can forget all that.

I feel like killing myself.

I've not had a seretonin crash this hard in 30 years.

I guess you never can tell.

Might've missed my meds for a day or two in fairness.

Maybe I've just got very low blood sugar levels?

Y'know, from not eating anything for over 24 hours.

I've just put some oven chips on though.

And I've mo sauces.

Eat. Sleep. Watch Caroline Munro. Do the things that bring you pleasure.

There's been another flood at my storage units.

Fortunately hardly any of my stuff was ruined this time.

Nightjar wrote:

I feel like killing myself.

I've not had a seretonin crash this hard in 30 years.

Take your meds you mad b*st*rd. Do something nice until they kick in.

I don’t want to sound cruel, but I don’t want my mothers partner to die in her house. He seems to have become very fond of the place. She, however, has deep reactions to things and places where upsetting things happen - more so than is within the normal range. It will forever become ‘the room that X died in’ and ‘the stairs he was carried down’. I know what she’s like.

I can’t find a way to emphasise this to her without it either upsetting her or it ending up in an argument.

There are more practical matters. The bed in the room he favours is a very good one with a mattress that was almost new when my grandfather died. He hardly had any time to enjoy it himself, and it was taken lock stock to my mothers place. I don’t think he should die in my grandfathers bed.

Then there’s the will, which is still up in the air, and my mother is too lazy daisy la la la to get it hammered out, and down.

He’s actually in his own house right now, pending some new hospital trip, with plans to head straight for hers when he’s released. I know she finds the pressure almost intolerable - I spoke to her at lunchtime and she was drunk. Her flat is kind of her sanctuary, where bad things haven’t happened before. It was left to her, and touchwood so far, all bad things have taken place elsewhere or in the past. Where she is now is psychologically untarnished by the actual physicality of trauma.

I’m trying to be nice - I even bought him a cake last month - but she’s run ragged by tending to his needs. He’s virtually incontinent I hear. I am considering inviting him round here to discuss things in full, once I’ve sellotaped bin bags to the sofa - obviously I’ll sit on one too so he’s not singled out. And we can talk seriously over tea and cake, about practicalities and legalities.

I know he likes strawberry tarts, so I could get one of those in. But at heart are two unpleasant facts that can’t be got away from - 1) my mother handles stress very badly, and 2) actively planning to die (as opposed to having an accident there) in someone else’s house is just not on.

As far as I’m aware, he’s made two jokes - one along the lines of ‘you’ll be a wealthy lady soon enough’ and two ‘your money grubbing mercenary of a daughter must be happy’. But the second isn’t really a joke, it’s what he thinks of me anyway - I know he refers to me as the black widow, and we all pretend to find it amusing although it comes with real animosity. We had a hideous fight a year ago.

Apparently he has a cousin - his closest relative, and is determined this person should not get anything. Fair enough. But that does need to be written down and properly legally witnessed, and if that’s mercenary, so be it. You can’t just die in someone’s house and not have that nailed down. So she’ll nurse him, change him, have the place soiled with disease and death - and he could die intestate…

Worse than that actually. At the most serious end of the scale, she’ll expend huge amount of energy and find herself a very high quality bed down, and her drinking and anxiety and PTSD will be at new heights. And it’ll be fine for him - he’ll be off out of it having received the very best of care and comfort, and left her high and dry, with a bedroom that’ll need redecorated and spiritually cleansed.

I can hardly sleep with worry about it all.

I am torn as to my feelings, because I really don’t like him. But I don’t hate him, and I was reading stuff about online about exactly what’s wrong with him and it’s very bleak. I have previously called him all the names under the sun.

Also, some of this is my stuff. I find death disgusting. I can’t eat on the same block as a funeral directors - if there’s a restaurant along from one that’s the end of it, if there’s a newsagent next door I won’t even buy a bottle of water or a packet of crisps there. I am repulsed by graveyards - I’m not someone who visits Paris and strolls through the Père Lachaise. It’s all so unsanitary. There’s nothing worse than the thought of a dead body in the house. So I’m having to separate out what’s purely my stuff from what should become others issue to deal with.

Père Lachaise is the best 'sight' in Paris.

No doubt. It’s a mournful town. A site given over to mouldering is in keeping.

Stunned, but relieved. My mother is on the same page as me about dying in someone else’s house - no go.