My sister a few years older than me was my savior as a child. She protected me from my evil older sisters when I had grown too old to be cute anymore.

I come from a large family with a matriarch who passed the child watching duties to the siblings once the child was closing in on Kindergarten. And I am wedged between two boys who followed a threesome of girls who naturally got the care duties.

My elder sister were mean. Called us boys names, taunted us, and in the case of the middle girl physically abused me several times and sexually abused me a couple of times and locked me in closets.

Her younger sister was an angel to me. A guardian angel.

Fast forward to my mission. This sister was the girl who never wore pants to school. She was super religious. And in the end a bishop decided to pressure a divorcee in a student ward at Ricks to date her. A few years later and a few kids later for her I was on my mission. I found out from my oldest verbally abusive when I was young sister that my guardian angel was a polygamist. I took it pretty hard. I wrote her and she confirmed the principle was her practice now.

Skip ahead again to today. After a few failed attempts to convert me to the principle my brother-in-law has probably cut off the contact with us. It has been a least 6-7 years since they have visited us here in "the real" Zion. But last Saturday my sister called my wife and told her that she has breast cancer. She also told my wife that she understands if I don't want to talk to her but that she would like to talk to me.

I don't know what to say. So many years. So much water under the bridge. She was like a mother to me when I was young. Old feelings are creeping up. I'm lost in my past and sad for her. This fall if the cancer isn't fixed by the impending chemo she will lose her hair that reaches past her waist. What do I say?

She loves polygamy. She worships our ancestor Zina Diantha Huntington Jacobs Smith Young.

If I talk to her it will be awkward. Out last meeting didn't end well. She and her husband went out to diner with us and then after returning home he kept the child locks on us and proceeded to preach and testify for an hour in our own driveway.

Needless to say, we didn't end on very good terms.

I've never really dealt well with her since her marriage and the polygamy made it even worse. Her douche bag husband went from greasy salesman to soft-spoken-ish overly patriarchal pompous Warren Jeffs type. Warren is our half-uncle and my sister (and her husband) have met him several times and thinks he is great. Ugh!

I still haven't decided if I want to call her.

Maybe you could just send flowers and tell her you appreciated how she treated you growing up and you wish her well with her health.

Call her and talk to her.
She's a frightened woman who was your guardian angel as a child; she's got cancer; and she's married to a polygamast douche, who probably doesn't listen to her. She needs you, just like you needed her once. Who cares about polygamy. It's just one more mormony, dumb thing. Talk heart-to-heart with a human, your sister.

Give her a call. Deal with her husband and the polygamy issue as little as you are able.

+1,000...

You will never be sorry that you had this conversation with her, but if you don't have it, the lack of it will likely bother you for the rest of YOUR life.

Take it from the member of a family that deeply believes in "last conversations"...

...no matter HOW difficult it might be, you will always be glad you did it.

This is what I grew up internalizing, anyway.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/11/2016 02:56PM by Tevai.

Tevai Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> +1,000...
>
> You will never be sorry that you had this
> conversation with her, but if you don't have it,
> the lack of it will likely bother you for the rest
> of YOUR life.
>
> Take it from the member of a family that deeply
> believes in "last conversations"...
>
> ...no matter HOW difficult it might be, you will
> always be glad you did it.
>
> This is what I grew up internalizing, anyway.


Elder Berry, I absolutely agree with Tevai on this one. Best of luck to you and condolences for your sister. Your call may have the positive impact on her as did her impact on you as a young child. Sending good thoughts your way. This may be a very healing moment for both of you :)

cinda Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> This may
> be a very healing moment for both of you :)

I hope so. One thing about my family, my mother has a "get over it" attitude to anyone suffering anything. When my littlest sister had her uterus removed my mother grieved her lost chances at more grandchildren than anything my sister was dealing with. My wife helped support her emotionally.

Same story different sister. I doubt there are many who would console her. This is what she taught me as a child - hide your feelings and tell mother what she wants to hear.

Elder Berry Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> cinda Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > This may
> > be a very healing moment for both of you :)
>
> I hope so. One thing about my family, my mother
> has a "get over it" attitude to anyone suffering
> anything. When my littlest sister had her uterus
> removed my mother grieved her lost chances at more
> grandchildren than anything my sister was dealing
> with. My wife helped support her emotionally.
>
> Same story different sister. I doubt there are
> many who would console her. This is what she
> taught me as a child - hide your feelings and tell
> mother what she wants to hear.

It's really difficult to give advice in situations like these, especially when it is NOT your own family who is involved...and your family situation is far different than anything I have ever experienced.

My best advice: Go with you gut.

Somewhere, within your own consciousness, you know what is right for you...and this will be, simultaneously, probably what is right for everyone else directly concerned.

It's probably a feeling, rather than a "thought."

If you have a "feeling" that you think is authentic for you, I would follow that feeling.

In my own life, the only real mistakes I have ever made were when I did NOT follow my gut.

If you can trust your gut, and you know you can, then I think you should follow it in this case as well.

In which case...N-e-e-e-e-e-e-v-e-r mind!!!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/11/2016 06:06PM by Tevai.

Tevai Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> If you can trust your gut, and you know you can,
> then I think you should follow it in this case as
> well.
>
> In which case...N-e-e-e-e-e-e-v-e-r mind!!!

My gut it telling me to call her. She is a racist. She is a polygamist. But she was someone I learned love from. Even if now that love is tangled in a bunch of religious hate and unjust activity, it deserves a phone call. Thanks.

Take it slowly. To start, perhaps a note with a few sentences of appreciation and one sentence telling her about your life.

If you don't hear back, that's okay. Wait a couple of months and send another note or leave a phone message.

I reach out to people when I have no other option. When she went to polygamy, I imagine, that was the same as her burning all her bridges. I wouldn't feel bad about being concerned and wanting to talk to her.

If you do decide to talk to her, I would definitely lead with how this sister impacted your young life and how much you are grateful for it. (at least that is what I read from your original post)

Let that lead to other topics organically.

Thanks RfM. I don't know why she wants to talk to me. I'm really curious. I would like to console her as best I can for all the times she consoled me. It is just really hard for me to interact with my family. I feel out of control and at the mercy of their manipulations. Maybe this just is what it is and I can deal with it and give her something in return.

We are all such disconnected people with the narcissist mother being the one common denominator. She forced herself to be the glue that bound us together and tried to wedge herself between us whenever we would gravitate to each other as older children. She has to have all the love. We are the scattered remnants of a "Celestial" family.

I just had an overreaction to the child locks. Yikes.....I'm ready to scream.

An hour in the driveway is over the top. I would have peed myself or faked the urgent need to use the bathroom.

I can't stand being "trapped". OK that said.........
It was not your sister but her mentally ill husband who trapped you.

I'm hoping you can talk to her when he is NOT there.

I suspect she feels a strong bond with you and wants you in her life....and needs you right now.

Best of luck to you.
Hope you update us on your decision and what happens next.

Exmo-k

exmo-k Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> An hour in the driveway is over the top. I would
> have peed myself or faked the urgent need to use
> the bathroom.

I guess we (my wife and I) were just both in shock. He built his argument fro polygamy with John Taylor and Woodruff and pretty much preached to us.

We didn't even interrupt his monologue.

If someone child locked me in a car that I wanted to get out of, I would have told them to unlock the doors or I would kick the windows out. If no response, I would have kicked the windows out.

That was beyond outrageous to do to anyone.

By the way, the way to kick out a window is to kick at the tightest spot of the glass. If you are in the back seat, you would kick the lower part of the glass closest to the front seat. I works fairly easily and doesn't take a great deal of strength.

After escaping the car, I would call the police.

As for your sister, I would contact here. Tell her that you will always appreciate what she did for you as a kid. If she tries to talk to you about polygamy, tell her that you don't want to talk about polygamy, religion, etc. If she continues, tell her once more. If she continues, tell her good bye and hang up.

Best of luck.

Unfortunately i'm a descendant of John Taylor. If someone locked me in their car to preach JT's doctrine to me I would dial 911 on my cell phone.

Don't ever get in a space with that guy again without cell phone service.

Can you tell her that you love her? How important she was to you when you were little and how important she will always be to you?

There are probably a thousand ways in which the conversation could go badly, but isn't "I love you" an answer to every conceivable challenge? I imagine that the one thing she will take from her conversation with you no matter where she goes is that her brother told her three times, or 20 times, or 100 times, that he loves her. Conversely, I can't see how there is any other message that you will regret having not conveyed 20 years from now.

At one point she was your savior. Is there anything that has happened subsequently that can negate that desperate, wonderful fact?

Sounds like it's time to get up to date and talk to her. Your memories are of: then. This is now.
Leave the crap in the past and just deal with a phone call which probably needs to be about your familial relationship and her illness and a level of caring.
Go for it.

There are a lot of things to consider here.

First of all, lets talk about breast cancer. There's a cancer in the breast, and there's breast cancer that may have moved or is moving to other areas in the body.

I had breast cancer 10 years ago. The stage of breast cancer and the type of breast cancer(BC) make all the difference in the world.

I had stage 1 BC. I went into out patient surgery, and had 6 weeks of radiation. My DR. wanted me to do chemo, but I didn't think it made sense in my situation. I was right. My cancer was contained and had what they call clean edges. In other words, it probably hadn't spread. My lymph nodes were also clean.

If your sisters situation is similar to this, relax. She's probably in pretty good shape.

If she has an invasive type cancer, if she's in later stages of 3/4/or more, and it's spread to her lymph nodes or other organs, she's in trouble.

Not all breast cancers are equal. The words can scare the hell out of everyone, but they can mean very different things depending on the details.

That being said, having any kind of cancer scares everyone. I would express your love for her, tell her what it meant to you when she took the role of being your mother and thank her for all of that. I would leave everything else out of it. Send her flowers, and a jigsaw puzzle. I know that sounds weird, but jig saw puzzles were a godsend when I was going through my BC scare. It was something I could spend hours doing with others, or by myself. No conversation was needed, but it gave a reason and something to do for hours. They kept me sane. Funny thing, I usually hate those things. I haven't done one since.

It helped my hubby and kids to spend time with me and not need to talk about the dreads that were going through our minds. Several semi difficult puzzles would be a good thing to send her.

That's my advice for what its worth. Love what's lovable, and leave the rest of it alone.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 07/12/2016 02:40AM by madalice.

At the end of your life which are you likely to regret? That you talked to her and maybe it didn't go as well as you wish it had? Or that you didn't go to her when she asked to see you?

Find out when he works and go when he is not with her.

This isn't brain surgery. Go to the sister you love and who needs you. Just take your cell phone and don't be alone with him.

Don't be fooled by breast cancer stage. It is always serious. I was Stage 1A with a 3 millimeter invasion and no nodal involvement. I had a double mastectomy. No chemotherapy needed. I was treated at what many consider the best cancer hospital in the United States and they considered me cured.

3 1/2 years later -- I was diagnosed with a recurrence in 15 lymph nodes. My surgeon told me I had only a 1.7% chance of this happening -- but it did. I've just been through surgery, 20 chemotherapy treatments over 6 months plus 25 radiation treatments. I have a very high risk of another recurrence, which, if it happens, most likely will be fatal.

Cancer is a scary monster and there are absolutely no guarantees.

I would reconnect, tell her you love her and appreciate all that she did for you when you were young. I think she will value hearing from you at a time when she is no doubt very frightened and distressed and may also be feeling quite alone. Sometimes things like religious doctrine and converting people mean less when you are facing your own mortality. I wish your sister the very best.

Maybe she needs and wants to make peace with you.

If that is the wish of a possibly dying sister, you wouldn't want to live with the regret of not granting her a sister's wish for reconciliation with her brother.

If she heals, you've helped repair that broken chink in the bridge that might help you to restore what's there for a sibling relationship if that's even possible.

You don't want to die with regrets either. It would be wise to make the overture IMO, than to ignore your sister's request. It is weighing on her heart, or she wouldn't have bothered.

One of the most important things I've learned about you over the years, Elder Berry, is that your heart is HUGE. Sometimes it might feel like a curse, but I love your huge heart. I love that it remains huge despite being broken in the past and the possibility of it being broken in the future. It's a beautiful heart.

I think you should call your sister.

I just got her number. Wish me luck.

I wish you luck. ((((((EB))))))

Good luck!

I'm really trying to get the motivation to call her. Maybe I will do that right now.

Did you get it done! :-)

I'm sorry - I wasn't (intentionally) pressuring you. Unintentionally - maybe.

Presumptuous and shitty of me to try to tell someone how to live.

Sincere apologies,
Beth

I got it done.

She is going to lose all that hair soon. Chemo will kill it so my eldest sister knows a gal who can possibly make it into a wig. A wig of her own hair maybe not as far down as her waist.

It was nice to talk to her and it wasn't. She is so deluded. All of my siblings are to one degree or another. Our parents aren't good to us. She went on an on about how "cute" are 80 year old parents are. Nothing she said was cute. They still volunteer for everything and she said that just yesterday my mother had to rush off when my sister visited her because she had her shift at the temple.

Sheesh. Your daughter has breast cancer.

Well, I think I did an okay job at listening to her. She is not scared of dying just not being able to do everything for her large polygamist family if she did die.

About that, she has stage 2B Breast Cancer? She just had a "port" put into her for the chemo. They are going to chemo both spots - right breast and under right arm - then they will do a right mastectomy and then give her radiation. This will all happen in the next year. She is hoping to be cancer free in two years. We will see. She has the fastest growing variety.

I hope it goes well. I was able to tell her that I love her and she to me. It was nice.

Funny, she said the one big thing cancer has made her realize is she needs to be nicer to people. She and my littlest sister are my only sister who have been nice to my wife. And she is the nicest person you would ever meet. Too bad she is filled to the eyeballs with delusions of us having a good family. Only see the bright side I guess.

We have a weird relationship. We could be close if it weren't for her husband. Thank God he stopped interrupting her conversation with me after about 10 minutes. She sees a broken little boy and I see a sad but bright, loving, and beautiful teenage girl. We were thrown together with some not so nice sisters.

She was always the one to help people. She tries to fix what other people break. Actually, she is now very successful at fixing things up with her husband. They now own several businesses that provide incomes for many of their cult members. Funny how my father was terrible in business and owning one and yet his daughter who was the least aggressive of the 5 of them is a very successful business woman. Her husband organizes and helps with the labor and she is the brains of the shop.

She said another thing about getting cancer is now she has to rely more on other people and give them more responsibilities. She would be a wonderful boss. I'm proud of her.

But I'm an alien to her mind. She lives in a world filled with people who I can't identify with much. Her son is getting married. And she said she was sad she couldn't be more a part of it like she was planning to be. He is 22. She asked me if I thought that was a good age for marrying. I said yes lying to her. My eldest is not far behind him and I want her to marry when it is right for her and I hope that is after 22. Young people have time to spend young and single and not breeding. I hope my young people can spend some of this time.

Her daughters married mostly at 20. One as a second wife that I know. We didn't talk polygamy. I wanted to focus on her and what she was dealing with and the last thing I wanted to do was to bring up that wedge.

Ah, well, I have so many feelings I can't articulate. Sometimes I just want to shake these people and tell them that our family isn't a family. We get along but we don't really care for each other like a family that loves each other would care.

Strange. She said that all the sisters went to lunch together and my eldest brother went and he was so cute. Well, he is just one of the gals. But we don't talk about that. I'm glad he went. He is more a sister than a brother. He should get to hang out with these women. God knows he wouldn't have much fun hanging out with his brothers. We are more disconnected than our sisters.

She did say at the end that now she has my number and she will call me. We shall see. Her AUB cult might be moving towards being more open. I don't know. Maybe she is just going to talk to me despite the fact that I told her husband that I will never have any interest in joining. I'm one of the damned because I chose to be polite and listen to his ramblings instead of nipping them in the bud. I told him that what he was saying was interesting but that I wasn't interested. It took me telling him I would never join to get him to stop and in stopping that meant we haven't had contact with my sister for over a decade. I tried to call once or twice but never got a return call.

I guess the cancer was a blessing? She called all 9 of us. I was the last one to talk to her about it. But she knew I would call. I probably interrupted some Sunday meeting or spiritual gathering. There sounded like a lot of people in the background.

It is done. Who knows what the future may bring. Maybe with her breast cancer she can talk to her family more. I don't mind listening which is something not many of us do with each other. That is what really sucks. WE don't listen to each other. It is probably because we don't really care. I care about a few of my siblings and she was the one I cared about most at one time but her lifestyle, her buying into the big happy family myth most of my siblings have, and her defending my parents in their narcissistic pursuit of their own glory is just too much.

It was very kind of you to reach out to her in her time of need and be so willing to listen. That's a gift.

Thanks for your reply.

I am sure she appreciates you being there for emotional support during this cancer bout. It must be bitter sweet talking to her again. Best wishes for the future.