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My grandma, my mom's mom, passed away in February of 2009. My mom was the oldest of 5. She always felt it was her responsibility to be the responsible one and take care of my grandparents as they grew older. The weight of losing her mom took a toll. She now had to take on the responsibility of caring for my grandfather. Even though he was moved into assisted living, a couple of times a week, she had to go visit and take care of his bills, but mostly to keep him company. He was very lonely since they had been married around 50 years. I can only imagine the difficulties my grandpa faced knowing he was getting older, no longer being able to do the things he loved like gardening on top of losing his wife and having to sell the house they shared for almost all of their married life. Unfortunately, he became difficult for my mom to handle which weighed heavily on her shoulders. She was afraid that the assisting living facility would ask my grandpa to leave and thought that he would then have to move in with her and my dad.
To add to her burden, there were some other family issues, still too sensitive to mention here.
My dad, instead of being supportive and trying to help her navigate through these difficult times, decided to prey on my mom's weakness that were beginning to develop. He started slowly, testing the waters, so to speak. My mom did have a lot of strength prior, but you could see that start to slip away as each burden continued and became heavier and heavier. Dad started to get more aggressive and controlling. He would "bark" commands at her. "Get me a glass of water." "Make me some toast." He seemed to always be angry. The counseling mom and I made him attend after the Franklin incident was futile. Like most narcissists, he just turned on the charm and niceties and told the counselor he was controlling his anger, and everything was fine now. When my mom told me that the counselor doesn't even ask her questions, I had offered to go along to their sessions, but my mom as she always said, "No, I can handle it." I offered to write a letter for her to take, but again she refused. But the reality was she felt defeated. She felt like the counselor wasn't even listening to her. Since my dad managed a greenhouse for 30 years, the counselor would quickly switch the conversation to asking my dad questions about how to take care of their variety of plants they owned. I was livid when I heard this. The counseling only lasted a few sessions before the "Dr." and I use those words loosely in this case, determined that my parents were fine, after all, my dad said he was so much better now.
During this same time, my dad started to control my mom's action. When he worked for the greenhouse, he was gone working a lot, often leaving the house at 6:30am and depending on the time of year, coming home at 8:00 or 9:00 pm at night. So, my mom could spend time with us and her friends as she wanted. But he got a different job as a custodian at the local university which were normal working hours Monday - Friday. Now he was home every evening and weekend. If my mom wanted to go to supper with a friend, he would insist on going along. At first, he made it sound like he just wanted to spend more time with my mom stating that he didn't get to spend a lot of time when he worked at the greenhouse.
My daughter was living and working in a town that was a 10-hour drive away. My mom and my daughter were very close, so we always invite my mom to come along to visit my daughter. Pretty soon mom started to decline the invitations. I would ask why, and she would just say that dad said he wanted to spend more time with her. He would make her feel guilty for leaving him and tell her that he just wanted to be with her. But that wasn't true. I told her we're only going to be gone for a couple of days, and we only go a couple of times a year. He can live without you for those few days. Again, I told her I would go talk to him. But again, she refused. It wasn't worth the fight for her anymore. She was getting tired of constantly having to fight him.
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