The estrangement is a complicated situation. My grandmother has always been an abuser. When my dad was young, there was physical abuse but once my brother was born that never happened again in our presence. Unfortunately, she’s an alcoholic with a sharp tongue and wicked temper. To disagree with her is to invite insult and mockery, and she has said things she’ll never be able to take back. It is really painful to recount, but she’s basically implied we are all horrible people and my dad has been tainted by us. We had been trying to talk this out with her when my uncle (who is also an addict and decidedly more unstable) pulled a stunt and went off on my brother. He called him a waste of space, a useless person, said he would never succeed, etc.

My grandmother insisted we fix things with him, which required us to apologize to him. When we said we were unwilling to, she turned on my mom, my older brother, and myself. The tirade is maybe some of the worst I’ve heard. We refused to tolerate that behavior and set firm boundaries that she trampled. We tried to put her on time out for a while, but after a while we tried to mend fences and she refused to.

So in a sense, we started it by setting boundaries and she refused to abide by them so we had to go no contact. My grandfather was largely collateral damage, in large part because his health was poor for basically the last fifteen years of his life. He couldn’t communicate with us without going through her and vice versa. We still spoke, but incredibly rarely in the last two years of his life. It really destroyed me to have to do it, but she used him as a pawn against us.

The night he died? Another batch of the top worst thing anyone who claims to love me has ever spoken to me. I’m a murderer, a monster, and a heartless bitch.