My husband died yesterday

[u/Mary-Jan]

After 1 year and 9 months tortious battle with cancer (SCC of unknown primary.) My beloved husband died at home with me. We battled this horrible experience alone. Friends and family just disappeared from our lives through this time. No one showed up to see if I needed help before he died and NO ONE SHOWED UP upon hearing of his death.

This is really what starting over looks like I guess.

[u/beigs]

That really sucks.

In your brother’s defence (I’m not condoning this in the slightest), some people do not react well or have the emotional capacity to deal with the loss of a really close member of the family or friend, and others have it in them to put one foot in front of the other.

Your brother likely shut down.

I feel bad if his partner or children (future or current) ever get sick because he won’t be a support to them either unless he grows a bit. It’s absolutely selfish and immature, and you don’t ever need to forgive him.

But you never know how you are going to react in these situations unless you’re there.

What he did after the shock, however, was all on him.

I’m sorry about your dad. Losing a parent to cancer sucks so badly.

[u/Chahles88 → u/beigs]

Thank you. I absolutely know he didn’t react well. I don’t necessarily blame him for that.

For me, it’s the context. I never got any sort of apology from him for going AWOL. I think he’s emotionally intelligent enough to know he hurt all of us.

Additionally, he’s said and done some pretty awful things to the remaining members of his family. He’s made comments to my youngest brother about how he doesn’t trust me to fairly execute my parents’ will, which is really odd given my mom is only 60 and I fully hope and expect to be close to retirement age before I even need to worry about that.

He’s made some pretty awful comments to my youngest brother as well. Things like commenting that he and his wife shouldn’t she having a kid because they can’t afford it (they have a 5 month old and are doing really well) He’s called them “house poor” which apparently means they bought a house but have no money leftover. He told my youngest brother’s MIL that she did a poor job at planning their wedding (at which my middle brother was the best man) which caused a massive fight at the last Thanksgiving my dad was alive for.

He’s manipulative and abusive towards my mom. She’s constantly bending over backwards for him and spends ungodly amounts of money shopping for him ($900+ Costco runs,etc.). Yet, he and his wife were very unaccommodating when my dad first passed and they tried to limit how long she could stay when she visited them. Even still, he’s made comments to me (a while back, we don’t speak anymore) that we “need to watch mom’s spending, as that’s our inheritance”. It makes me sick.

My mom met someone. It was by pure chance. My dad has been gone for nearly two years. I’m not one to judge my mother’s grieving timeline and I know she’s miserable being alone, so I’m happy for her. No one has met him yet, we plan to for Christmas. My brother has been nasty about it. “He just wants your money” and “He just wants sex” and “You just want sex” were things that came out of his mouth. I’m so disappointed in him for this.

I haven’t spoken much at all to my brother since last Christmas. He has two kids under two. We all met at my mom’s. Our daughter was fine for the first 48 hours, but then she came down with a cold and fever. She was miserable and we were going to leave but my mom insisted we stay and just sequester ourselves in the basement. As someone with a PhD in microbiology, I knew my daughter had likely already spread her bug to everyone. My brother lost his shit. He called us disrespectful for not leaving, and when my mom stepped in and told him it was he doing, he turned his wrath on her and called her all sorts of nasty things my wife won’t repeat to me but she overheard while I was taking care of the kiddo. My brother packed his family up and left. We haven’t spoken meaningfully since.

My youngest brother and my mom are still on friendly terms with him. I don’t know why. We’ve become the “sponge” who they come to to tell us how he’s wronged them recently. I tell them I don’t want to hear it anymore. Until they subject him to consequences, I don’t see him changing any time soon.

[u/beigs → u/Chahles88]

He sounds like a douche for so many reasons. Gods.

[u/Chahles88 → u/beigs]

I’ve tried really hard to see things from his perspective; why he would treat people this way and if I can give him the benefit of a doubt anywhere, and I consistently draw a blank. I can’t remember where I heard this, but it’s something I think about a lot:

Once you respect yourself, you automatically start holding those around you to a higher standard.

Im butchering the quote, but I get the the gist. I was in a bad place. I had just gone through an ordeal getting my PhD, we put our cat down, my dad died, I was having my own health issues where I had gained a lot of weight, had an acute diverticulitis attack and ended up in the hospital. I wasn’t healthy, didn’t feel healthy, and it took me a long time to work my way out of that rut. As soon as I starting gaining some self-confidence and self-respect, suddenly it became much easier to just put distance between my brother and I