bp, my entire family is a wealth of pain caused by one member against another. And I have at various times in my life held a lot of anger toward members of the family for things they did. The thing that has really helped me deal with it was to realize that they only did these things because their own lives were totally messed up. Even though your sister may have had all the material things life could offer, your story about her tells me that she sure didn't have a very fulfilled life. Her marriages never lasted, and from the way you describe her "friends" they were rather shallow, empty relationships. Perhaps her isolation from the family comes from a fear of any truly intimate relationship in her life. After all, she didn't just isolate from the "poor relations", she also isolated from her own children.

You said she has recently lost all of the material, shallow, surface things she had. Sometimes, that kind of loss causes a person to reach out to the one group of people who can never really sever their ties to you...after all, even though you can run away from them, family is always family. Sure, maybe now she needs you, but maybe she really needed you all along, and it is only now that she realizes it.

I don't know your sister, so I can't really know what motivates her. But maybe this gives you a way to think about her that makes it easier for you to see her and be civil toward her.

Good luck.
mj