Hi, I've been estranged from my mother and all but one sibling for over 10 years. My nacissistic mother is in her 80's and is dying. I visited her in the hospital a month ago and I had an honest conversation with her. I asked her why she and my sister shut me out. I saw her turn cold and turn away. She didn't deny it, or blame me, or shame me a usual. She just turned away. That conversation was what I needed to be able to quit feeling guilty for not being able to repair my relationship with them. I saw that my mom and siblings can't do or be anything different. I saw that I wasn't responsible to fix this.

Fast forward to yesterday. The only brother that I am in contact with, spent 10 days with my mom and siblings, saying good by to her. He spent one hour with my on his way to the airport. His last words to me were that I came up in conversation with my sisters. He told them I felt excluded by mom. The sisters told him they were surprised and didn't know I felt that way. After saying this to me, my brother immediately got up, gave me a quick hug and left.

He left me with a reality. Reality that he just dismissed what I told him I had been experiencing the past 10 years. But then, he has been dismissing my experience for the past 10 years. He never asked about why I didn’t visit her or why she didn’t visit me. He left without having a conversation about it.

It left me wanting to fill in the gaps left by not having that conversation with him. I'm trying to let his actions speak and not fill in the gaps. I am grieving that when I finally opened up to him and told him what I had been experiencing with my mom in the hospital a month earlier, he dismissed it. He was the only sibling who would visit me or contact me. He spent 10 days bonding with 4 (out of 5) of my other siblings over their mother’s decline and soon to be death. I regret visiting with him yesterday. I could have gotten out of the visit and wish I would have.

My mom is her fathers daughter. She was mentally and physically abused by him while at the same time her dad doted on a few select siblings. Only one of my aunts would talk openly about how horrible her dad was. One time, I was at my moms house and two of her older siblings were there. I don’t remember the conversation, but Fern said, something to the effect that children should love their dads. No one was allowed to say the truth about how he beat my mom and one of her brothers. He let a married preacher take another daughter as a girlfriend to live with he and his wife. He was openly hateful to some of his children and showered others with gifts. My mom and siblings are repeating the same show. How do I rewrite the show for my life and my daughters???? How do I not repeat any role in this play????