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Originally Posted by Mandjas  You may think that I am punishing you or that I hate you but the plain truth is I love you and sincerely care about your mental, emotional and physical health.... I am not blaming you for anything, as I know you have a terrible disease and to see you battle your illness is very upsetting and sad for the people around you, especially knowing that are powerless to help. |
Hmmmm -- I'm normally of the "write the letter to your alkie, sleep on it, then throw it in the trash" school of thought. But I actually like this one. I'm not sure it'll work -- whatever results are implied by the term "work" -- but it might help, both you and others, to get the issue out there, so that it is no longer the "elephant in the room that everyone knows is there but no one will acknowledge or talk about."
My suspicion is that the alkie will bristle at the idea that she has "a disease" and that you "sincerely care" about her -- but if she doesn't like it, tough cookies. The bottom line is that you're spelling out the conditions she has to comply with if she wants to see her grandson. If she keeps showing up drunk, she doesn't get to see him -- but she knows that, and she can no longer give you the usual line of BS that makes you want to do this:
Before my mother died last year, she suggested, at one point, that I write an actual letter -- put it down on paper and send, as you have done -- to my Dad, spelling out the fact that I am not going to move back in with him no matter what. I've kicked that idea around numerous times, as you might imagine, but always end up deciding not to do it, because my Dad tends to ignore anything he doesn't want to hear
-- if it sets a boundary he doesn't like, he simply ignores the boundary and acts as if it weren't there. (Whereupon I respond by withdrawing, not coming by or answering the phone very often, and basically withholding... whatever it is that I'm withholding from him.)
In opting to actually send "The Letter," I think you've done a good job in defining the boundary. You're not trying to manipulate the guilty party into giving up booze -- you're just saying, "If you show up drunk, you're not seeing the grandkid." Nobody can say you're out of line -- you're not forcing her to change, nor are you controlling or manipulating her in any way. You're not judging, you're just saying: if she wants to see the kid, she can d*mn well show up sober. If she objects to that, she's making it more and more obvious that there's a problem -- and it's hers, not yours.
I wish I had a tidy solution to the thing with my Dad. The thing is, I don't give a you-know-what if he stops drinking, at 89-going-on-90, but he needs to get it through his stubborn-*** head that I am not, am not, am not moving back there. I know he'd hate it if I said, "Mom told me I shouldn't move back" (which is true -- in one of her more lucid moments, we talked about that, and she said, "You shouldn't do that -- it wouldn't be a good idea"), and normally, I'd hate to say such a diabolically-calculated thing (to which there is no possible response, now that my Mom is gone), but... hmmm... I might just do it, at some point....
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