An entry from our Summer Reading competition.
AS I lay on the living room sofa, staring at the ceiling, I wondered how on earth I came to be in this predicament.
There I was in my flannelette pyjamas and dressing gown, flat out, unable to lift my head into a vertical position without collapsing with dizziness.
I had gotten out of bed to go to the bathroom and couldn’t make it back!
I kept thinking, this will pass…. this will pass…. this will pass. But it didn’t.
As my husband took off for work he asked if he could do anything.
He was unsure about leaving me in this condition, but I assured him I would be OK and I asked him to pass me the house phone and my mobile phone.
My son got up, dressed and fed himself and cast me several worrying looks and questions as he too took off for his day at school. Silence filled the house.
Dizziness
I lay there in the quiet; at least I wasn’t totally isolated. I had communication.
Water, I thought, I need lots of water, but to no avail, as I lifted my head that all encompassing dizziness, that spinning out of control hit me again.
I realised I needed a doctor. How on earth was I to get to the front door to let him/her into the house?
I had planned to do so much this day and here I was laid out like a body at a wake.
I suddenly remembered that we kept a spare key for the back door hidden outside for emergencies, was my neighbour at home?
I had her number in my mobile and called her, (this a little harder than it sounded as I didn’t have my reading glasses to hand!).
She was home and came straight over, found the key, unlocked the back door and was by my side in five minutes.
She was all care and concern and we arranged for a doctor to call and come in the back door as my neighbour would leave it unlocked.
What a wonderful woman, she even brought me a glass of water and a bucket! But she had to go to work.
The doctor arrived some two hours later when I was still no better.
She injected a rather large needle into my nether regions and asked was there any stress in my life at the moment?
“Wellll,” I answered, denial briefly flying in the face of common sense, but then a distinct, “Yes,” followed as I told her we were going through a family court case and I didn’t know if I could take any more.
There it was, out in the open, hell, I thought, this is ridiculous.
The doctor told me I should gradually improve and by night time should feel OK, but should I not improve I was to be taken to hospital!
Drastic
Hospital! It seemed so drastic, but that was it, no medication, just go to hospital if you don’t get your act together!
Go straight to gaol, do not pass go; do not collect the $200.
Well, I had all day to lie there and ‘get my act together’ and of course there was much analysing and worrying going on.
How could something as trivial as a family legal problem bring me to my knees, but it had and it made me realise the power of family relationships.
It has never failed to amaze me how family dynamics change when one person from a family departs this earth.
Respect
It makes you realise how one person can keep the peace amongst the other family members whilst alive, albeit unknowingly.
Now call me naive, call me daft, but I have been brought up to respect one’s elders, to speak out when the need arises but to do so with clear reason and tact.
The problem, I realised, was that many people are not brought up the same as oneself and couldn’t give a rat’s rear end about respect and fairness.
I was essentially a third party here, looking at a situation and knowing all the facts and fallacies and it was hard to keep emotion out of the equation, supporting and helping my husband, (as one would do).
It was also important to care for my mother-in-law (she had few carers’ and was quite unwell).
The fairness issue rated equally high; how could it not with my upbringing?
So how did all this stress start?
It started when my sister-in-law died of cancer at the age of 41, and then her father died two years later.
My husband was just one of two children and he effectively became the only child.
My brother-in-law and niece went to great lengths to tackle my mother-in law about changing her will within two weeks of her husband’s death; my mother-in-law was already severely depressed and upset at not only losing her daughter but also her husband and now she had to deal with people making claims on her future estate – that was bad timing, rude and unfair (according to our beliefs anyway), and there was much soothing of ruffled feathers.
My mother-in-law was outraged and upset by the request but decided to make changes to her will to keep the peace.
My mother-in-law was taken to a family solicitor to do just this.
Rudeness
The result being that my husband would receive 50% of the estate on his mother’s demise and his niece would also receive 50 per cent of her grandmother’s estate (in effect receive her deceased mother’s portion) – fair enough.
But events then changed dramatically over the course of the next few years, the relationship between granddaughter and grandmother deteriorated dreadfully, due mainly to the granddaughter’s monetary demands and rudeness.
My mother-in-law then made up her mind to change her will to favour only her son.
She did not want to leave her granddaughter anything.
To add insult to injury my husband was also executor of his mother’s will as well as now being the sole heir. My husband was very aware of the personalities and the possibilities in the ensuing scenario and felt very uncomfortable.
His mother asked him three times to take her to a solicitor to change her will.
She was very agitated and adamant, so after the third request he took her. Then, the inevitable; my mother-in-law passed away.
My husband was in a very awkward situation.
He was lawfully expected to fulfil his role as executor by abiding by his late mother’s wishes but on the other hand felt his niece should receive some part of the estate.
He finally decided he would give his niece part of the inheritance anyway by paying some of her costs to make her life easier, even though this went against what his mother wanted.
But, on hearing that her grandmother had left her out of the will, my niece shot off to a solicitor and started an avalanche of insults and accusations in order to gain what she felt was rightfully hers.
She was not interested in discussion with my husband in any shape or form.
Spat out
The emotions involved were huge and constant thoughts of what ‘might happen’ or ‘what one might be criticized/accused of next’ very unnerving, it is these assumptions, I believe, that cause the intense stress in these situations.
All the family politics were dragged in, churned over, embellished and spat out.
This had now dragged on for several months, every Friday a letter would appear in our letterbox demanding this, that and the other, or else unfair or untrue accusations were made.
It got to the stage that I couldn’t face the letterbox anymore, it was too stressful!
I would stand at the front door looking down the garden path at the letterbox, one part of me wanted to ignore it, the other part of me felt incredibly drawn to its contents.
At one stage the letterbox was actually ripped off the fence and found at the end of the street!
On another occasion my husband had eggs thrown at his car windscreen.
I have never seen such lies, twisting of situations and insults in my life, and all from a family member.
It went very much against my grain. My husband was advised not to answer any of her letters and demands and to only correspond through a solicitor, which my husband had to hire and attend just to defend himself!
In this state of ‘muteness’ my mind would go wild answering her letters which she would never (unfortunately) see. Very frustrating.
So there you have it in a nutshell, the cause of my illness. And yet there was more to come, another four months in fact.
So who does have the right in this situation? Of course, the granddaughter had a right to her mother’s share but does she forfeit this right by her constant monetary demands and unseemly behaviour?
And doesn’t the grandmother have a right to leave her estate any way she wishes?
After a 13 month legal process the courts decided that the granddaughter should receive 25 per cent of the estate but she had to pay her own legal fees which would have detracted greatly from the sum received.
Twist
We were happy just to have the whole process over and done with but the experience has left a very sour taste in our mouths and there is to this day no contact between certain family members.
There was, however, a twist to this tale.
In the original will, the granddaughter was entitled to the mother’s share should the mother pass away first.
And yet the granddaughter and her father made a great fuss demanding that the grandmother change her will on the assumption that with their wife/mother dying all the grandmother’s estate would pass on to her son – they effectively did themselves out of 25 per cent of the estate.
I rest my case.
by PENELOPE WILSON
Perth Voice Interactive 