I’ll start with the good news. Yesterday I got to see my brother for the first time in about two years. He flew in from Arizona, my Mom and step-dad picked him up and they had a late lunch with me and my husband. Then we ended up back at our house to catch up for a while. It was nice! My brother doesn’t fly back until this Friday. 🙂

Now the not-so-good news. Since my last post quite a bit has happened.

The heart hospital scheduled my sister’s surgery for this morning at 8am. We were all relieved that she would finally have the help she needed. My brother, who is in the Air Force, got a special leave granted to be here for her surgery.

Last night my Mom told me that my sister’s husband told her there might be an issue with their insurance, which is Medicaid. When I heard this I asked my Mom to clarify the date and time of surgery – Who told her? Had it been confirmed by the hospital? She asked me, Why so many questions? and I said it was not like a hospital to confirm surgery without first checking on a payment guarantee, especially a surgery that would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

This morning I found out via FB that the surgery was cancelled. My step-dad later texted and said the hospital is “working to get insurance issues resolved.”

I have no idea what will happen next. My guess, though, is if insurance issues are not resolved then her husband will take my sister to another hospital to see if he can get them to do the surgery. If he is smart he will check if they accept their insurance first. I doubt the heart hospital will keep her much longer now that they know there will be no payment. Maybe they will transfer her? Hopefully.

The other bad news…. When I first spoke to my Mom on the phone yesterday she was quite upset. My BIL asked her to drop my nephew with his mother. When my Mom did this she confided in my BIL’s mother that she was frustrated with the Meth use by both her son-in-law and my sister. Then she told them, “IF they continue to use Meth I will take them to court to get custody of him [her grandson].”

My Mom thought my BIL’s mom was trustworthy.

Within an hour or so my Mom received a phone call from my sister. She yelled at my Mom and threatened to take her son and “vanish”. I don’t know the specifics but whatever my sister said really upset my Mom to the point that she was stumbling over the words on the phone. The call got dropped and so I waited until I saw her to get the rest of the information.

Turns out my Mom got a text from my BIL attacking her and calling her a “demon” and also threatened to disappear with their son. He specifically told her he knew people that could give them fake IDs and help them disappear.

My guess is that my BILs Mom left out the “If” part and just told them my Mom was going to take their son. Sigh. People can be so stupid. Why tell a sick – dying – woman that her son may be taken away?? The only point of doing that is to create drama and upset people.

I reassured my Mom that the threats were hollow. They can’t afford to disappear. All their contacts are in this area and with my sister being sick and recovering it is too risky. I advised her to call my sister and sort it out. My Mom calmed down and apparently did call, thus discovering the cancelled surgery.

Sadly, they have kept their son from my Mom before as a means of getting revenge for one thing or another. They know how much my Mom loves her grandson and so use it to their advantage. It is very sad.

Dream: You are Beautiful

As a result of all this continued stress I am not sleeping well again. This morning I had a dream that brought me to tears.

I was with a group of kids. One of them reminded me of my best friend from high school. We went out at night. I don’t know what our purpose was but it felt like we were sneaking around. 9pm was a time that kept being repeated. People were telling my friend, “Good luck at 9!” She asked me what it meant. I didn’t know.

We ended up in a cemetery. We got to a fence and I began to climb it when I heard sirens. I said to my friend, “The police are coming. We need to leave.” She said, “There’s no one here.” My foot was caught and I struggled to get it out as a police car approached. We hid but were soon discovered.

I remember a little boy was with us and somehow he ended up being targeted by one of the officers. He was molested. 😦

The dream gets hazy but I remember standing up to the officer and calling him out. I spoke to him for a while telling him he needed to do something before he hurt another child. I went over ideas of how he could prevent future incidents. I also helped the boy, guarding him from further molestation.

Then the boy morphed into a young girl. She went into the arms of a woman who felt like a caretaker. I went up to the girl and told her that if anyone ever touched her that way again to immediately scream and tell someone. The girl hugged her caretaker and the caretaker opened her arms to me. I hugged them both and said, “Remember, no matter what, you are beautiful.”

When I said this I began to sob and the caretaker hugged me tight. I felt deeply all the atrocities the girl and boy had gone through. It felt like I was feeling the pain of all similar experiences on Earth. It was heart-breaking. But most of all it was unfair.

My tears woke me up.

Considerations

When I woke I couldn’t help but think of how my BIL had recently told my husband of his own sexual abuse as a child. The abuse was by a male cousin who had taken advantage of him.

My sister also was also molested as a child.

I knew that child sexual abuse often results in the victim having a difficult adult life. For example, my Mom’s cousin, who I remember meeting when I was around 10 years old, had been molested by a male cousin. He ended up liking men and eventually contracting HIV and getting full-blown AIDS. I recall seeing him toward the end of his life and noting how the once attractive and vibrant man was just a shell of his former self. His entire life had been altered from his childhood trauma.

It was obvious to me that my sister and BIL/cousin’s lives had been altered in a similar fashion. Neither has fully confronted their abuse. My sister chooses to blame my Mom and use her past as a crutch and excuse for her behavior. I don’t know much about my cousin but likely he is doing the same.

I also realized that whether my sister chooses to live or die is HER choice. If she chooses to live it will be tough and she will have to choose recovery – which is terrifying to her – or avoidance. Choosing recovery also means choosing her son. I hope she has the strength and courage to take the high road….that is if she gets the option.

I feel like my dream was also about my own past lives, those in which I had been both the victim and the perpetrator. In the dream not only did I advise the molesting man but also both victims – male and female. I have recalled several past lives full of sexual abuse and know there are many others I have yet to recall. My advice to my dream child self was to always remember that I am beautiful. It reveals to me just how devastating such trauma can be to a person’s self-esteem/self-love. The perpetrator also suffers from similar feelings. No one is spared.

It seems to me like I am recognizing my sister and BIL’s plight as part of my own. I am relating to them via my own past experiences but also via the Collective. When one can do this, judgement falls away and love and compassion takes over.

Now I just wait to see what path my sister will choose. I stand in observance with love and compassion in my heart, supporting my family as they need me.