Loss Of Beloved Grandmother Leaves Void In Family's Hearts

[conuly]

DEAR ABBY: I recently lost my mom. It was very sudden. We were extremely close, and she was the most wonderful grandmother to my children. My mother-in-law and my husband have a strained relationship that I have struggled to navigate for years. I have always reached out to her and made sure she sees the grandchildren.

I have been a little lost since my mom's death, and so have my children. I had hoped my MIL would step up and step in, but it just didn't happen. I am disappointed and sad for my children, and the situation seems to be getting worse. When I try to talk to my husband about it, his reply is, I'm not close to my mom like you were with yours.

What should I do? Do I keep reaching out and being angry on the inside, or speak up and say something? I should add that my husband and his mom are now at the point where they barely talk on the phone. I hate to be negative, but I feel very done with the childish behavior! My children need a grandma. -- ANNOYED UP NORTH

DEAR ANNOYED: Please accept my sympathy for the loss of your sweet mother. That you and your children feel her absence so acutely is a testament to how special she was.

Unfortunately, you married someone who doesn't have the kind of relationship you were lucky enough to have with your mom. All moms and grandmothers are not created equal. Your MIL appears to be incapable of stepping up to the plate.

Rather than continue reaching out to her with expectations, you might be less angry and frustrated if you do it less often without cutting her completely off. Instead, look around and consider adopting a mentor for yourself who can also become a grandmother figure for your children. This isn't unheard of. A government-sponsored program, Foster Grandparents, provides a way for volunteers 55 and over to stay active by serving children and youth in their communities. To find out more, go to nationalservice.gov and click on Senior Corps. Love is a gift that keeps on giving, and it works both ways.

https://www.arcamax.com/healthandspirit/lifeadvice/dearabby/s-2379387

Comments

[conuly]

Abby's advice isn't actually bad, but....

1. People with great relationships with their parents need to STFU about people with terrible relationships with their parents. It seems self-evident that if somebody is estranged or semi-estranged from their mother then there's probably a good reason for this besides mutual childishness, and if you're married to one of the two parties then you probably have a good guess as to which one is more at fault.

2. With that said, this LW seems to have a bizarre sense of entitlement. Your children do not "need" a grandma... and you don't get to draft people into the grandma army just because you want them to have one. Usually this weird entitlement goes the other way, with people proclaiming that they "need" grandchildren or they "need" their children/children-in-law to do vast amounts of physical or emotional labor for them. I've never seen it flow in this direction before. Lady, if your mother-in-law doesn't want to "step up", that's not her responsibility, and I'm not sure why you expected things to change. She doesn't want to be the sort of grandma you want her to be, and that's her right.

[green_grrl]

Just ... yes and yes. If MIL was the kind of person to estrange your husband, do you really want her to cause your children the same kind of disappointment/emotional damage? Geez. There’s probably an older lady right in your neighborhood ready to cluck and coo over the kids.

[legionseagle]

I was never more relieved when my partner said "I'm never having my children round your parents again" and I could say, "What do you think I've been telling you all these years? *Now* you believe me?"

[minoanmiss]

People with great relationships with their parents need to STFU about people with terrible relationships with their parents.

A-fuckin-men. I just... does LW have no sympathy for her husband, or any knowledge of his reasons for not talking to his mother? I remember when my youngest roommate asked me why she didn't have six grandparents and I explained why I wanted to keep my parents away from her and her brother, and she got it. And she was nine years old.

[lemonsharks]

ALL of this.

[ayebydan]

Well said.

[delight]

I never had a grandma, since my dad's mom died when I was an infant and my mom and her mom didn't get along.

I think I handled this okay. Not everyone NEEDS grandparents (I had none; all were dead by the time I was three except the one my mom wished to avoid), it's a privilege. One I'm sorry LW's kids no longer have, yes. But it's not a requirement.

[jamoche]

I would feel really weird if I was one of those children and my parent decided to replace my recently deceased grandma with a stranger. Not that it's likely to happen - I googled it and "Foster Grandparents are role models, mentors, and friends to children with exceptional needs". Having a stable family that had included a grandmother until recently does not strike me as "exceptional".

[conuly]

Oh, well, then Abby's advice is awful, but I think she was picturing a Big Brother/Big Sister sort of organization, where they don't actually intend for you to think of the older person as your actual sibling or a replacement of same.

[jamoche]

Yep, it looks like it's Big Brother/Big Sister for the over 55 cohort, aimed at kids who never have had that kind of relationship.

LW just seems to think there's a grandma-shaped hole that needs to be filled and Abby is encouraging that, when what she really needs is to work on accepting her mother is gone and help the kids to accept that too.

[rmc28]

I'm just stuck on the idea that there is A Defined Grandmother Role so *obviously* now MIL is the only grandmother in play she will magically fill this role despite showing no interest in doing so previously.

My children are lucky enough to have two grandmothers alive and interested in being in their lives, but they don't do so in the same ways because they are not the same people.

Huh, I wonder if "I had hoped my MIL would step up and step in" is about free childcare? Which I feel really strongly no woman should *have* to provide to her grandchildren if she doesn't want to (and in this case there are other reasons to worry about leaving the children with her - but even if she was the best sweetest kindest mother and grandmother in the world, she still gets to decide not to "step up".)

[shirou]

It also occurred to me that this could be about childcare.

I have mixed feelings about the subject. I agree that nobody should have to become a fulltime daycare, and I certainly agree that no expectation for childcare should be gendered, but I think it's reasonable to ask grandparents to watch their grandchildren some. My mother's parents watched me a couple days a week when I was little, and my parents even moved to be closer to me so they could do the same for my kids. I (male) fully expect to help care for my (potential) grandkids. It goes the other way too: my mother helped care for her parents when they were old, I will care for my parents, and I rather hope my kids will be there for me as I age. I can't speak yet for what my kids will do, but the rest of us have met (or will meet) these obligations gladly, because we care about one another, but also because we believe that's how families work: we support one another. Doing everything in life without this supportive structure just seems hard. Maybe it's not, but it's difficult for me to imagine, since strong family support is part of the culture in which I was raised.

Of course, none of this is applicable to the letter, where the husband's family structure was almost nonexistent to start with. I don't know why LW's husband and MIL have such a poor relationship, but LW was kidding herself if she thought her children's birth or mother's death was going to change that.

[cereta]

This was something I struggled with all the time on the childfree advice column community on LJ: the conflation of "you are required to do this thing for people you love" with "this is a thing that would be nice to do for people you love." There was a serious, almost Randian feeling there that any request for help (especially involving children) was a horrible burden and completely unreasonable, and not, just, you know, a thing friends and family do for each other.

[shirou]

I would never call it horrible, but caring for the very young or old is a burden—a demanding, exhausting, often frustrating, responsibility—even when it's also joyful. But that's the point: to spread the burden around a little; to help those closest to us and receive help when it's our turn.

I can understand why someone might chafe at such expectations, and those are perfect people to remain childfree. Helping family is not limited to child/elder care, but those are the biggest categories.

[conuly]

Honestly, some people love to borrow other people's kids.

[cereta]

My best friend and her parents have basically adopted my kid. She goes to Auntie L's for sleepovers, the mom attends grandparent events, and the dad lets her come and play with his office kitties. We have a number of friends who take her to movies or otherwise just spend time with her. Found family FTW!

[heavenscalyx]

LW is just being so weird about this. No, your MIL has no responsibility to do the amount of emotional and physical labor your mom did. I’m guessing that LW is missing the babysitting and supplemental mothering, and is struggling with her own profound grief. It’s not really about the kids needing a grandma so much as LW wants a functional mother figure. MIL clearly isn’t one of these even to her own children. LW needs therapy to handle her own grief, not a foster grandma for her kids.

[azurelunatic]

Argh.

I want this LW to unpack exactly what the expectations are for a grandmother, if the kids "need" one.
Love and affection?
Role modeling and teaching skills?
Gifts?
Unpaid childcare?

[cynthia1960]

+1000

[ayebydan]

If you want to count my step parents, I technically have or have had 6 grandmothers. 2 were grand. 4 were trash. 1 was actually related to me.

Do better for your kids by ceasing to stop obsessing a generation before.