Messages By: lynlovel

The deadliest of all sins............greed

IMy grandparents had 5 girls and lived modestly. When my Mother divorced my biological father the four of us (my twin brother and our sister) went to live with them. Mother worked 3 jobs to support us and our grandparents raised us along with the begrudged help of our aunts. We heard it everyday, how we robbed our grandparents of their retirement years. We were small children that has no say in anything but felt guilty then for this horrible misdeed that we couldn't understand.  It dosen't really matter in the message of this but our grandfather told us daily and his biological daughters that he loved us as much as he did them and "those precious children will be the ones to give us our last drink of water", we were and loved him deeply.

 When they passed away my Mother continued to live in the house until she died, only a few years. later. On the eve of her death, it was an all out brawl over who got what and the sell of the house. I was trying to care for my Mother during her last painful days of cancer but all her sisters could think of was the money and the "things". They were scurring around like ants manipulating each other and trying to manipulate us by having pieces of paper shoved in my face to sign everything over. The will had already been made but they wanted to make double sure we got nothing and they got everything. All of them had been stealing objects over the years when they would come over for one of their daily visits. To their surprise, the three of us wanted absolutely nothing in the house or even our Mothers little percentage of the sale of the house.

I thought our family was close and loving, it was anything but. After my Mothers death, we split down the middle and have never been the same. There are no longer any gatherings, talking and every attempt has ended up in hurt feelings and someone having to "bring up the past". It has been 20 years and the greedy aunts have all died but two. They went through their money in weeks and the "things" are stored collecting dust.

Was it worth it for them? I wonder but am not interested enough to try and find out anymore. I work as a nurse in Hospice and try to keep families together in these critical times where everyone is fragile, angry and focusing on everything except the person that is dying and loss they are experiencing.

I wish families would focus on what matters, each other and their relationships. There is no object or amount of money that can replace what once was wonderful or thought to be wonderful.

This family is probably past any healing, our's certainly is but for those of you who have this to face, please remember it's the only family you will have and the lonliness is almost unbearable once they are gone. Hold on the each other and not "things".  The money will be spent, the "things" will gather dust and hold no value over a human being you once loved and will miss. You will feel like your entire life was a lie, so get things settled before the death of parents, stay close and hold on to each other.

Some of you guys are making this message board into a religion war.  Unbelievable!  What about Katherine???

I agree that her parents need to hold some sort of responsibility in this whole mess, but she is 18 now.  Hello, she is an adult.  She can do as she chooses now.  All her parents can do at this point is be supportive or Katherine can "write" them off.  (Either you accept me for who I am or I'm gone routine.)  There's nothing her parents can do about it now.

Why was her computer time not being monitored way back before this mess even got started??  I have a computer that accesses the internet, but I also have parental controls set up on it.  Plus, it's in a room that isn't private.  When the children are on the computer, I am, in a sense, monitoring everything they do.  There is NO myspace, no chat rooms, no chatting at all with anybody even if you don't have to type it in!!!  It is up to the parents to protect their children!!!  Not the other way around.

My oldest is almost 13.  She has been begging for a myspace for almost a year.  "All of her friends have one!"  The answer is always no.  Parental controls will not even allow her to access myspace.  I'm not stupid enough to believe that she isn't on there when she is over at a friend's house, but I do believe that she has the fear not to create her own account.  I understand the frustration of stating the reasons why she can't have one over and over, but that's the way it is.  She always comes back with the same reply, "I can make it private and I will only accept people as my friends that I know."  Yes, we all know how that works.  (Not going to happen.)  All of her 12 and 13 year old friends have their profiles set to say that they are 17.  That way, they don't have to have their profiles private!!!  (Obviously their parents aren't watching what's taking place!)  Look up the story of the girl that just committed suicide near St. Louis, MO all over a comment left on her myspace!!!!! 

The cell phone, c'mon lady!!!  These kids with cell phones that have free run with them drives me nuts!  It's just like a computer!  Watch what is going on with it!  Yes, we have one for the kids, but it is a Firefly!!!  WE program what numbers can be called and only allow it to accept calls from those numbers!  If you don't want to go that route, go to disney mobile.  You can do the same things with their phones and you can also track them on your computer because the phone has a GPS.  Some people don't want to pay the money...  What is your child's safety worth???  Our kids do not appreciate it, but they know that's how it is.  And yes, we hear all the time about all my friends have their own cell phones, they text, they take pictures.......... on and on and on.  Guess what?  We care more about their safety versus them looking cool. 

Let this be a warning to all parents, you have to stay on top of your kids.  Yes, you can trust them to a certain degree, but not with full reign.  They are not mentally mature enough to make adult decisions, so don't let them.  Do I think that my kids are going to turn out wonderful?  No, but I am doing everything in my power to protect them from something like this!  We talk and we talk a lot.  They know the reasons behind everything that we do and they know the punishment they will face if they break the rules.  That's how we run things in this house.

As far as Katherine, I truly hope that Dr. Phil can help.  What's happened has happened and she can only move on from here.  I hope that she makes the right choice because she has not matured mentally and we all know that it's easier to brainwash a child.  Good luck and I hope that she doesn't have any resentment against her parents for "allowing" this relationship to continue and "allowing" her to get into this mess.  No, they didn't "allow" it, but they didn't do anything to stop it either.

I think you have hit that nail on the head.

This guy does sound abusive to the children.