Alice and Grandma

Hope you all had a good holiday. I head back tomorrow to see and hear the adventures that my clients enjoyed or endured, while exchanging the gifts and sharp-tongued remarks that only families can share.

I already know that Alice had a particularly interesting few days because as she was finishing her shopping she received a call from the Assisted Living facility that her grandmother was living in. They let her know that grandma had been taken to the hospital. Alice is 45, her mother, Dolly is in her late 60s, Grandma is in her eighties.

Alice called grandma who responded by demanding to know how she found out that she had suffered a heart attack. But before she could answer Grandma went into a tirade about how no one cared about her, especially Dolly, but Alice also never answered her phone when grandma calls her, so she is useless and inconsiderate and Grandma is hoping to die, and she won't tell anyone about it. She ended by telling Alice to make sure she didn't tell her mother that grandma was in the hospital.

Alice promptly called her mother. But mother already knew. But still, mother was waiting to see if Alice would call and tell her. That way she could blame Alice as the source of the news, and not the secret source she had who had informed her. Dolly then called her grandma. But grandma told her that when she had the heart attack she was all by herself, which proved that nobody cared, and she hung up.

Dolly then called Alice and yelled at her for being so mean to grandma. Dolly said that Alice knew that Dolly and grandma were on the outs, so she should have made more of an effort to know what was happening to grandma, even though grandma wouldn't speak to Alice either.

Meanwhile, Grandma called Tony, who is Alice's 25 year-old son. Grandma had been talking to Tony and secretly sending him money because Tony was still living at home with Alice and not working, unless you consider staying in-touch with his great-grandmother a job. She said she was about to send him more money so that it wouldn't end up in the hands of Dolly, or her sister, Debbie, or Alice, or her brother Rick. She felt that Tony should have it, because he is the only one in the family with any feelings. Tony was more than happy to agree.

Tony then found his mother, Alice, and yelled at her for not taking the calls from grandma, that she didn't make.

Alice told me all this in a session right before Christmas and asked me how she should handle her family relationships.

I told her she should make Tony pay rent.