Thanks Pook - this is exactly what I'm contemplating - either leave it as it is or make one last, doomed-to-fail attempt to reconcile with her sliding into dementia - basically checkboxing "I did the right thing". Thing is, I checked that box twenty years ago, sooo - not much point in checking it again. I'm sad she never got to know her younger grandson but, given my older son just had an encounter with her saying needlessly hurtful things, (he's in his thirties, his choice) I think that was the right decision. It sucks though. Anyway, I'm really just - I dunno - venting isn't quite the right word. Expressing my ongoing sadness at this.
Ref end-of-life talks with my sister - I can't actually have those. She's the enmeshed GC and refuses to talk about anything to do with family history or anything uncomfortable at all. "I don't want to talk about it," followed by a topic shift more violent than Operation Desert Storm. We have an OK but not close relationship, that I expect will fade once her kids and mine are off to college or whatever. That's a couple of years out. My other sister is lost to drugs - not in the street addict sense, just in the "numbed out on meds" sense. I miss the original version of both of them.
And - while I'm sharing, although it's not BPD. My older son is very deeply angry with me over my absence in his youth. It's on me, I accept that. I've apologized so much he now gets angry when I do. I had to draw a boundary there too.
I think I'm getting to the point of my life where I've been there, and done that. I can handle this fine, I've handled much worse. I suppose its the family dynamic version of a clogged toilet - no emergency, just unpleasant and unavoidable.
On the bright side, I can write a book called "Unclogging the Family Toilet - How to deal with _____ without getting smeared."
