Oh boy, I have a lot going on today. I know this is going to be a bit long, so if you can hang in there, thank you.

My brother, who is an alcoholic, is dying of cancer. He's done a lot of bad things to a lot of people. He was my mother's favorite. He turned up homeless on my parent's doorstep right before my father died almost 6 years ago.

He continued to drink and do "bad" things. He wracked up $13,000.00 in credit card debt on my dad's credit card after he died. And he was taking my mother's car out (without a driver's license) at night when she was sleeping and one morning she woke up to find the car crashed in the driveway.

There is more but it's too long and convoluted to go into now.

He seemed to stop drinking once his cancer got more aggressive about a year ago. I've never excluded him from any holidays but by including him, I've excluded my niece - who will not be in the same room with her because he smacked her at my daughter's first communion lunch 5 years ago.

Here's the dilemma. My kids and I really wanted to see my niece for mother's day. He'd been very sick and hadn't been getting out of bed so I honestly didn't think it was going to be an issue.

I very clearly told my mother Saturday night that we were inviting my niece.

My mother told me Sunday morning that SHE is insisting that my brother come, that it's time for my niece to get over it.

I was VERY angry about that and wound up not seeing my mother at all on mother's day.

Here's the thing I feel like I should be angrier about. I'd been letting the two of them pick up my 5 year old from preschool. My brother has his license back now and my mother lends him the car as well as lets him drive her around.

Just last week, he drove my 5 year old from their house to mine, a little more than a mile.

Well, last week, I found 6 empty vodka bottles in his room. My mother did confront him but he said they were old and he knew if he threw them in the garbage, she would find them. Of course she goes out a lot so he could have put them in someone else's garbage but that did not happen.

I couldn't tell from the conversation with my mother whether or not she believed my brother and I felt my reality wavering a little bit.

But here's what I don't understand. I KNOW I have to protect my children. I KNOW I can't trust my mother to be an accurate judge of whether or not he's drinking. I KNOW I can't trust my mother NOT to lend him the car. I KNOW I can't let my little one go over there anymore.

But I do feel a bit wavery about it all. I don't feel the anger that I felt when my mother told me that she was insisting that my brother come over for mother's day.

Shouldn't I feel angrier about it all?

Liese

PS Aside from the vodka bottles, I also found a receipt from a store where he'd purchased a chair a couple of days before on my mother's credit card without her permission. And then my mother confessed that her 50 gold coins were missing.

My mother confronted him about the chair. He told her he was buying it for her because she needed it.

Oh, he's so smooth, isn't he?