Whether we try communicating with our JW relatives tomorrow, next year or twenty years from now, the response will be the same. We need to understand that. There is never going to be a time when a JW in need will turn to an "apostate" relative for help, even if he or she is down to the last crumb of bread or last drop of water. Just as they will turn down blood that would likely keep them alive, they will turn down help from a non-JW relative, no matter how much they may be in need. If we don't understand that, we weren't in the organization long enough to know better.
As for the situation between my mother and me, there are thousands of similar cases around the world. JWs preach that there is little or no "natural affection" in the world, but they are among those who are most outstanding in the lack of it. And the majority remain blind to that fact all their lives. Rather than think highly of family relationships, they eagerly obey instructions from men they never met who tell them to stop speaking to the members of their own intimate family who leave the organization.
If family relationships matter more to us than freedom from mind control and personal regimentation by misguided leaders at headquarters, we should have stayed as we were. We should have known that we would be ostracized when we walked away from the organization. Now is not the time to be lamenting what we've done. Now is not the time to be thinking that maybe they will change if we try to be nice to them. The ONLY thing that will change their minds about us is our crawling back on our hands and knees as we beg for their forgiveness. If our relatives will welcome us on that basis only, why should we fret and fuss about getting back into their good graces? Such an attitude on our part is what they expect. As they see us, we are weeping and wailing and gnashing our teeth because of the calamities befalling us outside the "paradisaic conditions" of their organization. Why should we even in the slightest give them an inkling that such is the case, when in actuality it is not?
On the other hand, why should we try to make their lives more miserable? They don't want us in their lives, unless we meet the approval of men who rule over them and are no part of their intimate family and ours. They've rejected kinship with us in favor of a spiritual relationship with those men. Their happiness is with those men and not with us, unless we renounce what we have done and go crawling back in search of their forgiveness.
I know of two cases where the JW parents became incapable of looking after themselves, and their "disassociated" children and grandchildren made efforts to care for them. This was met with legal opposition obtained by financial support from the congregations involved, so that the children were forced to abandon any hope of caring for their parents who were in the December of their lives. So, folks, please understand what you are dealing with here. You are at odds with an organization that feels it has ownership of your JW relatives -- a wealthy organization that will oppose your every effort to be united with your family. In addition to that, your JW relatives like it that way. They don't want YOU. They want the friends they have who are in submission with them to those distant owners of their lives at headquarters. If you die before they do, they will not weep for you. You should understand that clearly. They will simply bemoan the fact that you "missed out on everlasting life," and just as God doesn't want you -- as they see him -- they don't want you either. On the other hand, they will gladly die for those non-members of your family who legislate to them from Brooklyn headquarters on how you should be viewed and treated.
Frank