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Grandfather passed away - bombshell dropped by mother

LegacyUser

Hi folks, yesterday we received news that my mum's father had passed away. Mum and her family are all English. She had us in Scotland and we moved over to Ireland 20 years ago, so we saw very little of them, we are essentially estranged.

She has two brothers and one sister, and my grandfather leaves behind his wife. So dealing with funeral arrangements etc. would be tricky enough. I always knew there was a tension between Mum and her parents, was told she ran away from home when she was very young several times (14/15 years old). To be honest I just thought maybe they kicked the sh*t out of her, or she was very rebellious or something.

But yesterday when my mum was in tears on the phone telling me her dad had died, she basically alluded to the fact that she was abused by him when she was young. She told me he should have been in prison for life and she was glad he was dead. She's never told anyone, my brother or sister, her partner or her brother or sister. So for probably 50 years she has carried around the weight of being abused with the fact that her brother and sister don't know what a monster her father was. She was the eldest by some margin and putting two and two together it sounds like her mother knew and decided it was for the best not to tell anyone if it stopped which it did.

I don't know wtf to do here, my mum probably needs therapy if we had the money which we don't. I despise the fact that her lovely brother and sister think that my mum was the 'family problem' because of the grief she caused her parents when they were young. She probably went out of her way to hide us from them when we were younger. If mum goes over for the funeral she will need to essentially feign grief and ignore her mother who she is also harbouring a deep dislike for. I don't think she should go really because it's only going to cause her more heartache.

She did a phenomenal job raising us and hiding this. My brother and sister think they were typical and lovely grand parents and I did too until yesterday.

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LegacyUser

Not sure where you are based but Rape Crisis Centre's around the country provide free counselling (there is a waiting list unfortunately) There is also a 24 hour line she can call. Let her know about this, but don't pressure her, she has been carrying this for a long time and may be feeling overwhelmed

ChrissieH

Hi OP,

Sorry to hear about this, and just to give you some little bit of insight / information / whatever, so as far as I'm aware, the HSE do offer a free counselling service to survivors of sexual abuse; whether it would matter that your Mum suffered this in the UK, I have no idea but I'm sure someone would be able to answer that for you. Of course the other issue is that there's probably a waiting time to attend, and now that her father is dead, it might trigger her and she might need to talk to someone quickly, but there is also low-cost counselling services available throughout the country if you Google it, you'll find phone numbers.

I also want to say, at the risk of causing a bit of stress to you, that usually with the sexual abuse of a child, it's not confined to just one child.. that's just statistically speaking, of course there are exceptions to all rules, but just to bear in mind that your mother's siblings might not be as ignorant of the situation as you think.

As regards attending the funeral and facing her family members.. I just hope that she accepts that it's entirely her own call, she shouldn't feel obliged to go, nor should she feel that she can't go. It is a tricky one, because there's a general attitude that you must "forgive and forget" and "don't speak ill of the dead" and all that bullsh1t, so I can imagine people in her situation really don't know what to do for the best.
The fact that she's told you about what happened shows that she is looking for a listening ear and maybe that will be enough to help her to talk it out and reach her own conclusion on whether to go or not.

Best of luck with it all.

Ursus Horribilis

If your mum decides to go to the funeral, could you go with her for moral support?

Cash_Q

Alba Counselling offer free counselling to victims of abuse. Long waiting list but it's self referral so she could approach them when she's ready. Connect counselling is a free service over the phone which can also be used by victims of abuse. It's possible to speak to a counsellor and make an appointment to speak to that same counsellor in the future too. Contact info for both is easily found through a Google search.

It is of course early days for all that as she's just disclosed this information to you. If she wants to attend the funeral it would be a great support if you could go with her. If she doesn't want to attend then try your best to support her with that decision too.

LegacyUser

Thanks all yes I will suggest these counselling services to her but I doubt she would actually reach out to them.

I know what you mean about it being something that people can't just 'turn off' regarding other siblings. Mum has another brother no one talks about and I really don't know why that is or if it's related.

Of course if we went to the funeral I would be there, I think she mentioned she would need me and my brother and sister there anyway so it would be the lot of us.

I suppose my question is, many months from now after this has blown over and you were in my shoes, would you rather your estranged uncle and aunt knew the truth about their parents or be blissfully ignorant of it their whole lives, knowing that they think your mum was a problem all along? It's the type of thing that could rip everyone apart even further but on the otherhand it could bring us all closer together. She obviously wants to hide it because it's shameful and she would rather everyone know nothing because they are happier that way, but to me she is crushing herself even more for no reason...

leggo

On top of the free services with waiting lists, if you go to IACP.ie and look in your region, there are a lot of services available at affordable prices (€50-80 tends to be the range I've found).

woodchuck

throwaway1702 wrote: »

I suppose my question is, many months from now after this has blown over and you were in my shoes, would you rather your estranged uncle and aunt knew the truth about their parents or be blissfully ignorant of it their whole lives, knowing that they think your mum was a problem all along?

OP if you're asking if you should reveal your mothers secret, the answer is NO!

I understand what you mean about your uncle and aunt not knowing the truth about their parents, but it's not your secret to tell. Why do you even care if you don't have a close relationship with them anyway? It's up to her to reveal the truth, but if/when she does that is entirely up to her.

Cash_Q

Absolutely do not even consider telling ANYONE about this, it's not your secret, not your experience, not your trauma.

zapper55

OP you seem to be hinting at telling her siblings in a few months. That is a horrendous idea. It is up to your mam if she wants to say anything, it is not your place. Your idea that it might bring them closer is incredibly naive at best and dangerous at worst.

Her saying it to you is a huge step for her and she obviously trusts you. It sounds like she finally feels free. I hope she gets help that she needs and that you don't betray her confidence.

Abuse is about lack of consent and any sort of control or say in the situation. Imagine how she would feel if you told her family.

ChrissieH

Hi OP,

I think you may have misunderstood what I meant when I said that the abuse is usually not confined to one child - what I meant is that usually when there is sexual abuse of a child in the home, it's not just that one & only child that would have been abused, but obviously each child would be reacting in the way that you'd expect - feeling isolated, afraid, vulnerable, violated and ashamed, as well as feeling responsible for protecting their family, so they don't talk about it to their siblings, so what I meant was that it's very possible that some or all of your mother's siblings were also abused and nobody ever spoke of it.

Your mother's family display typical characteristics of a family utterly destroyed by abuse and secrets - everyone deals with it in their own way so you'll have some family members distancing themselves and then being scapegoated by the others, as it gives them someone to zone in on as being a "problem" - there can be a fear that because this person has left the ****ty family circle, they're a loose cannon who might expose the family secret, so there's great measures taken to ostracise and discredit this person. Then you may have some who fall into addiction, you may have some who appear to be pillars of the community - people react so differently to this kind of childhood trauma. It's sometimes only when you realise that there was CSA in the home that it suddenly all makes sense.
And while I understand that for you, the injustice and outrage that you probably feel about your mother's suffering is leading you to want to shout it from the rooftops, that is not the way to go with this. It's brand new, shocking information for you, so your first reaction is to "do the right thing" by blowing it all open, but she's kept it quiet for all these years so you have to think about it from her perspective; there's a huge amount of emotion and trauma for her that you'll never understand and it would be a massive mistake for you to try and take this situation into your hands at this early stage of disclosure. The fear of being judged is often insurmountable for survivors of CSA so this is truly a situation where you have to basically go along with everything she wants, even if that means she's suddenly BFFs and chatting away to her family as if nothing ever happened. It's far too complex to get into any of the historical stuff now when her father has just died. You have to understand that for children going through abuse, they operate from a survival mode, just getting through each situation as best they can, without having the luxury of weighing up pros and cons. It's all just reacting to the here and now in order to make it through.

You have to realise that she may be now thrown into a state of complete turmoil - she may be thinking that now she has to just 'get over' what he did, and she may have harboured fantasies about confronting him that will now never come to pass. Knowing that he is now dead and gone and justice was never done might be the biggest thing to come up for her, she could get really angry - you just don't know how this is going to play out but if you think she won't reach out and attend counselling on her own, maybe all you can do is hope that now she's broken the ice, will bring it up again sometime soon, and you can listen to her until she gets used to talking about it and maybe then she'll decide to go to counselling.

In the meantime, I really recommend that you get some books from your library about childhood sexual abuse, both theory and biographies; they will really help you to understand where your mother's perspective is coming from, it will tell you a lot about the complex emotions she may have.

LegacyUser

Thanks ChrissieH this is a very good response. I would never dream of telling my uncle and aunt who I barely know anything so don't worry there folks

But the idea of telling my mum (after a lot of time has passed, and only if she brings it up again) that I think it would be right to vindicate herself by telling them seems like the right thing to do. I think one of the main reasons we don't know our cool uncle and aunt is simply because she was the bad sheep of the family that moved as far as she could away from everyone and never reached out.

Of course I don't know any details about how my grandmother handled the whole thing but she certainly didn't discourage them from thinking this way because it was obviously easier for her. It would probably be easier after she has passed away as well really.

I will suggest counselling to her in a few weeks after this funeral has blown over.

heretothere

I don't have any advice, but your poor mam. It can't be easy for you either. All I can suggest is to be there for your mam and make her know you believe her

leggo

Remember also OP that it is not your problem to handle, and I mean that in a positive way as in you don’t need to be the one to manage it or to carry it around day to day. She is still the parent and you are still the child, that dynamic follows through even into adulthood. Unless they are elderly, infirm and need our care, it is not our job to care for our parents and help them manage their lives. You can support her in a million ways like just hearing her out, or giving her a hug or saying “I love you” if you feel like she needs it. That stuff helps hugely, often moreso than someone coming in and trying to micro-manage your issues. If she asks for advice, you can give your two cents, but otherwise let her deal with it.

You deserve massive credit for being willing to do so, you’re obviously a lovely person. But maybe stepping back a bit and not feeling the rush to act on this might be the next step. It’s new information to you so the urge to do something about it is natural, but it’s an old wound for your Mam so how she deals with it is up to her.

Ursus Horribilis

I can understand why you want to right this wrong but it's time to step back from this and support your mum. As has been rightly pointed out, this is her problem and she has had to live with it for decades. Opening up to you was a big thing to her and it's something that needs to be handled delicately.

Sexual abuse within a family can be a complicated thing, especially when you're not privy to what else has been going on. What the internal dynamics in the family are, who knows what, who did what. The one certainty here is that the results of this hand grenade are unpredictable. There is no guarantee that your mum's relatives will welcome her back into the fold like the prodigal son. It could make things far far worse. If your mum wants to reveal all, it should be a decision she reaches by herself. Not something she's pushed into. Indeed, if she thinks you're the one starting to drive this she might clam up and say no more.

I think the most helpful thing your mum could do for herself now is have counselling. This is an old wound that has been reopened. And surprisingly, losing her father is also something that could really upset her. Humans are complicated and human relationships can be even more convoluted.

qwerty13

Why do you on the one hand describe your mother’s family as estranged, and on the other as ‘lovely’ grandparents and ‘cool’ siblings of your mother?

That might sound like a pedantic point to make, but if you’re to help your mother, you need to be aware of your relationship with her family. And have planned
How to deal with the rift.

Defunkd

If she wants to go, support her. This will be her last chance for her to see/speak face to face with this man. Even though he abused her, she still has love for her dad and she will have a lot of conflicting emotions that are going to manifest themselves somehow.

She won't have to pretend or feign anything. If her dad's wife is not her biological mother, then she shouldn't give a fcuk what the woman thinks, or fear making a scene. It was her dad.

Any decision for medical help must be at your mum's behest. Until she's willing to allow a stranger re-open old wounds, it won't be effective.

If she chooses to seek help, you can contact a rape crisis centre or your local hse clinic/district nurse. They can get you free sessions.

seamus

throwaway1702 wrote: »

But the idea of telling my mum (after a lot of time has passed, and only if she brings it up again) that I think it would be right to vindicate herself by telling them seems like the right thing to do. I think one of the main reasons we don't know our cool uncle and aunt is simply because she was the bad sheep of the family that moved as far as she could away from everyone and never reached out.

This is really up to her. It's complicated because her "vindication" may have a net result of just making two more people deeply unhappy and not really making your mother feel any better.

Just because something is the truth, doesn't mean the world will be a better place for it being said.
It's common in these scenarios for the person who makes the reveal to find themselves even further outside of the family circle. So it's not a simple choice.

What your mother does to heal from this is her own journey. She may decide that the truth and the pain has died with her father, and that there is nothing to be gained by ruining her siblings' memories of their father.
Or she may decide that so long as he gets to have a legacy as a good man, she cannot heal. Either way, it's her call to make, her journey.

Don't push her towards the decisions that you want her to make, just support the ones that she makes, whether you agree with them or not.