Family can be a lot of trouble.
In brief summary, I spent the last couple of days down in Tidewater visiting my brother’s family, checking on them in the wake of another suicide attempt by my brother. What I discovered was literally a huge mess. The apartment was a disaster area, clothes everywhere, toys everywhere, trash everywhere. It looked like the inside of a white trash trailer.
(By way of background, my brother (31), sister-in-law (31), her twin sister (31), my two younger nieces (2.75, 1.5) and the twin’s son (8) all live in this 2 story apartment. My brother is currently in a mental health facility after Wednesday morning’s attempt.)
I did help get them started on cleaning things up, and I hopefully got them started on working on their bills in a meaningful way. I was not about to clean their dishes for them, though – both sinks were full, and there were more piled up on the table and stovetop. They were late on rent, they were late on the one car payment (which I did pay), and late on a storage unit (which I also paid).
Last night I sat down with two women and apologized for being blunt, but just looked at them and told them they were going to have to be adults, and the house and their finances as they were now was not how adults lived. Had I been a social worker when I came in on Thursday they would not have the kids. They have to get in the habit of putting things away immediately, and they have to take care of bills and mail ASAP. The younger girl keeps getting ear infections; I pointed out that with food trash all over the house, there was a good chance that was contributing to the kids getting sick. My brother admitted when we visited Thursday night that the mess in the house was a trigger for his depression (which the SIL heard, and I reemphasized a couple of times over the weekend). Hopefully coming from me it will get through to them, because heaven knows it hasn’t gotten through coming from either set of parents.
And my parents have said that if they don’t get this stuff cleaned up and soon that they’re going to have a talk with her parents and will consider taking action jointly to protect the nieces.
I’ll do some follow up with them over the next few weeks to see how they’re doing with bills and the cleaning. As I told them, they’ve got to get their act together and act like adults, or their situation is never going to get better, and it might get much, much worse.
I came home today, did some stuff around my own apartment, but I’m just wiped out emotionally tonight.