A tricky situation

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"Tricky situation" is probably an understatement considering what happened a few weeks ago. Let me fill you in, first of all my brother and his family came down to visit a few weeks ago to stay with us for a little while (Vacation/getting paperwork in order for them). They had been living in Japan for a few years and my brother is an American married to a Japanese woman. You can imagine the cultural barriers this causes as his wife's English leaves a little to be desired :-\. But yet God keeps this family together and thats pretty much what keeps us from all going for each other's throats.

My brother Steve has been doing all he can to keep his family going and he has two little girls that essentially are pulling on their mother's strings and getting what they want from her. Since she controls Steve as well through several methods you can guess that there isn't much order in the family as Steve is usually too exhausted from working his butt off to bring order to most situations that his children cause :-p. So as you would imagine a visit from Steve and his family = chaos being brought into our fragile schedules and routines.

All I have to say is I THANK GOD my mom got me a lock for my room. Now I can shut out all other things and focus on what I want to do. The downside is that people don't like it when I lock em out, but my mom keeps em in check and lets em know thats just the way I roll. If they don't like it well thats too bad. This was especially the case with his kids as I thwarted many of their attempts to get to my room. My mom has always been keen to make people aware of who I am and how I think, much to my appreciation.

While my brother was part of the "Tricky situation" he wasn't the biggest part of it. Before he could leave once he got all his things in order (He had to return to Japan because he still has a lot of debt to get out of there as well as his job being there as well.) his youngest daughter gets sick and infects the entire household [including myself despite my best efforts ]. This grounded Steve as his daughter was called by a doctor as unable to fly in a plane and forced him to reschedule his return trip with his family.

And just when me and mom where getting exhausted mentally with dealing with the chaos Steve and his family were generating, my mom comes up to my door and just tells me flat out that my Grandmother on my father's side had just passed away. I can still remember dropping my water bottle in my hand with a dumbfounded look on my face. Me and my mom KNEW she was going to die soon but the timing of it just made me grumble, " Sigh, typical." A rude statement but considering Murphy's Law was in full effect at the time not surprising.

At first, other than my initial surprise I pretty much remained unemotional about it. That is till the sorrow of those closest to Grandma like my dad [it was his mom after all ] started tugging on me. I mean I did my best to keep my emotions in check throughout the entire thing, as my other brother Jason (who was also in Japan and whom I got into contact with later on that night) told me that, " Well Jim, you're going to have to be the pillar of strength for everyone else." Lovely, I told myself sarcastically. But despite being annoyed at the situation I did my best to be strong for those grieving. My brother Steve wanted to stay and be there for the funeral but everyone told him that Grandma would never want him to get fired over her and put his own life in even worse shape. So with regret and sorrow that he had to leave he and his family finally parted and for the first time me and mom finally caught a mental break.

However the momentary peace didn't last long as now we had a funeral to plan and attend. This would be my first funeral that I would ever witness. Due to my sensitivity, the emotions of ALL THAT SORROW from all those relatives just hit me hard especially when we saw her body in the casket the first time the night before the funeral. I mean when people starting crying I may have had tears in my eyes but I didn't sob. I was fighting all that emotion being generated from everyone else's sorrow. It was the first time I EVER got to touch a dead body as well and man she was like an icicle, it was quite interesting. The light that fought all those years of disease and broken bones finally was gone, leaving only a cold husk behind. Yet I knew this was the inevitability that we all must face and one that I accepted long ago, yet Grandpa (my dad's father) was still having trouble coming to terms that his wife was dead. He even asked before they closed the casket for her to wake up and wondering out loud if this was real before he finally broke down and wept.

It was really an emotional roller coaster ride and everyone closest to her was present and just bawling their eyes out as they bid their last farewell. Anyway, we finally get through the funeral and everyone got to pay their last respects and say a few words to Grandma before they put her into the ground. After that me and mom got a little more time to try and recover from Steve, his family, the funeral and all that emotion over the weeks. Then it wasn't long before we had to deal with another issue, one that is still around.

Now that you have some background on the situation here is where we are at. Grandpa, due to the shock and drama of the event of his wife's death (she died peacefully in her sleep but she died with her 6 year old great grand daughter at their home as well as Grandpa taking her out of bed after she had wet it, calling the Ambulance and the crews worked to revive her for FORTY FIVE MINUTES.) can now no longer mentally stand to live in his old home. The result is now he is moving into our home. Now hes coming from a former military background (Gunnery SGT. retired USMC, the branch I failed at :-S), was raised in the south (some rascism there :-\ ), grew up during the depression, and suffers from OCD (hes a neat freak and likes to always nit pick things that he notices you aren't doing :-\). He has NO CLUE what Asperger's is all about and I have been worrying about this the entire time throughout the move.

Though he has all of his things here or in storage now he has luckily decided to travel with extended family through America for a time. This has allowed me some extra break time from all of the drama being generated from all this and I figured I would talk about it since we are dealing with an old man who is set in his ways and pretty tough to deal with. Luckily his age has tempered his aggressive attitude but he still has strong opinions about things and he apparently has "special" projects in mind for me and mom when he gets back .

I talked to Mom about this as we are both sensitive people. We are going to have to learn to stand up to Grandpa when he starts pushing us to do stuff. I mean we have to show that we aren't just sitting around doing nothing, (Grandpa's one of those man of action types that hate resting and taking it easy while me and mom are easy going people that are laid back). We have plans and things coming up that WE WANT TO DO, but can't at the moment so we are fine with just keeping things simple and not doing anything big until we are ready. If our speed ain't fast enough for him then thats too bad because you ain't changing my mom and you SURE AS HELL ain't changing me. After all I have been through (IE: Dropping out of drama due to an incident, signing up in the marines and failing boot camp, dealing with depression and the inner voices of shame and guilt) I ain't going to let people call what I do worthless wastes of time, (which he was hinting at in a conversation I had with him) nor will I let them try and "fix" me, which grandpa wants to do to me.

Doncha love that folks? People trying to "fix" you and "help you get better"? Heh I know better and I am done letting people try and fix something thats a part of me.

So to sum ALL THAT I WROTE DOWN, which is alot I know , I am going to have to defend myself and who I am against Grandpa and his strong opinions. Sigh, something I ain't looking forward to but in such an intolerant world to Aspies or people who are different from the majority in general this is what we often must contend with. Just a shame it has to be living just down the hall from me.

I think she can learn English quite well!

I hope things improve with you soon!

Hi Fox,

It's just the jitters BEFORE he moves in, the big, bad "unknown." Once things become more settled, you'll all become a little more comfortable with grandpa around.

Just as you want your needs to be taken into account, so does your grandfather (actually he needs you guys now, at least for a little while). I think after what he's been through...he deserves a little break. He might act tough because he is hurting deep down. You think your life has been turned upside down...All his life has been turned upside down too. I mean after all those years of order in his life, certain routines etc..everything changes for him, when he's old. Must be hard, even though he's such a "tough" NT.

You two might actually end up getting along really well...just have some understanding for what he must be thinking and feeling (new house, living with people he's not used to either, new expectations, new rules, new everything).

Yeah I know, I just ain't looking forward to arguing with him about certain things. Actually we do hit it off on some topics so I know its not totally bad but every once in a while hes going to bring up certain things whether its my routine or start complaining that the Mexicans are taking over this country and not enough regular Americans etc. Yeah, hes still family and I will do what I can, though we have to set the ground rules that this is our home and we have stuff that we want to do and work on.