I was aware, growing up, that my parents each had a feud going with one of their parents. My Dad didn't speak to his mother (his father had died back in 1947), though she wrote regularly. Only after he moved out did I open one of the letters on the table for him (but never retrieved) and wrote back did to my grandmother for the first time. I was in high school.

My mother didn't get along with her father (her mother died when she was five-years-old) and my Dad didn't help it by re-fueling the fire when it looked like they might reconcile. Anyway, I decided that was no way to keep a family together, so I worked at staying friends with both parents and my family.

We siblings had a rough patch after they died, and a mentally ill sib was now out of control w/ no parental restraint. There was an occasion at my dad's estate when that sib came over. I happened to discover a loaded pistol in Dad's sock drawer, and I really feared for my life if the sib saw that gun. I loaded it into a box and locked it in my truck until I could take it to a friend to keep. I find it no surprise that three years after his death, only a year after we settled the estate, I developed cancer. I was kind of stuck with that toxic relationship during the two years it took to finish the estate. Hopefully you can push back and get the poison out of the household more easily than I did.

Today I did some work for work, though it was a snow day off. I have too much to catch up on to let it all wait until tomorrow. It's early yet, let's see if I can take something off of my "to do" list. I did finish paying my bills yesterday, so that's pretty good. Maybe I can clean my office this evening? It's super slick outside, so anything I clean out will sit in a bag in here until I can carry it outside safely.

SRS