The dread annual family visit

by sass_my_frass 5 Replies latest jw friends

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  sass_my_frass

  We're on our way to visit the family tonight (they're a five-hour flight away, it's a good way to live.) I love my grandparents, and they're not JWs, and they hate all this rubbish and I am only going over there to spend time with them, as we don't really know how much they have left. Since I was there a year ago there has been no progress with my JW parents - they're still depressed and disappointed in me, and I know they always will be. There's no way to cure their depression unless they lost their delusion that they're not going to grow old and die, and that's a very precious delusion for them so I'm letting it be.

  At the most I want a civil relationship with them, at the least I want for them to not be able to whitewash the situation to the non-JW family such as my darling grands, and poison my relationship with them. I want my grands to leave this life thinking that we're going to be able to sort out all that silliness, so I'm going to hopefully be able to arrange a few dates with the folks with the grands there too, so that they behave themselves. I'm going to try to find some common ground with the folks, and just keep it light.

  Mum actually invited us to stay with them, but that's only so that she could tell people that she'd invited us to stay and we'd turned them down. If we'd called her bluff she'd have lost what little JW privileges she has left, and she knows it, and knows I know it, but at least she got to score that little point hey.

  So here we go, I'm going to note all the crazy mean things they say and quote them on it - wish me luck!
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  Purza

  So here we go, I'm going to note all the crazy mean things they say and quote them on it - wish me luck!

  Best of luck to you Sass!

  Purza
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  choosing life

  Good luck to you. I hope your family is a little less crazy than mine.
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  changeling

  Make the best of it dear, and make your "grands" happy. You'll be glad you did someday.

  changeling
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  greendawn

  That's the problem with people taht are mind conditioned by the WTS they think anyone leaving the JWs will die at an imminent armageddon, not a pleasant idea for them. Anyone disobeying the FDS gets a bad name with their jehovah and can only have a gloomy future. Let's hope one day they will get over the spell and see things as they really are.
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  sass_my_frass

  We've had a nice time with the grands and last night drove down the coast to give them and us a rest, stayed overnight in a little coastal town. We'll go back up now. Mum and Dad have behaved the one time they've seen us - the grands were around so they couldn't be too weird. Dad is apparently okay with pretending that nothing strange is going on in our family, and Mum throws out the occasional guilt trip but it's okay as long as I ignore it. We'll hopefully get another day with them tomorrow, and then we go home.

  I had Mr Frass sms the three JW siblings who live here to ask if they wanted to meet him (three years later and they've still not met their brother-in-law). Only one was interested, but then changed her mind when she found out that I'd be there too - the text mesage ping-pong got a bit insane. We've decided that we're a package deal, and if they want to convince him that they're not insane, they're going to have to be normal people. It's a long game, but I'm okay with playing it once a year to remind them that I am not in fact dead.

  We've been invited to my non-JW cousins wedding and I'd love to go, but I'll run it past Nan to see if she thinks the JWs will make the brides day awkward in any way. I suspect that the bride is oblivious to it all, and I want to go just to hold onto the non-JW family, but it's about her, not me.