I don't know if this is the right place to post this, but I'm feeling very sad today and have no one IRL to share this with. In a nutshell, DH and I both come from extraordinarily dysfunctional families. I am now close to my mom, but she lives on a different continent so the kids only get to see her once a year. She's a great grandma to them, but due to her codependent relationship with my awful, toxic sister (who my mom herself describes as 'evil'), she will never spend Christmas with my family, always my sister and her kids. My father is/was abusive and I try to keep contact with him to the very minimum for obvious reasons.
DH's mom is truly horrendous - I would swap pretty much anyone's MIL for her. I have honestly never met anyone so selfish, and her reckless decisions (that led to DH being moved between 9 different schools in his youth; having his name changed against his will; be mercilessly bullied by step-siblings; allowing her new husband to physically abuse him etc etc ) still haunt us to this day. She successfully estranged him from all his step-siblings and his real father (destroyed letters that his dad sent and told him that he wanted nothing to do with him etc etc).
DH is in the very early stages of rebuilding a relationship with his father, having been unable to deal with the revelations for many years (FIL tried to kill himself as a result of MIL's behavior!!) and as much as I like FIL a lot he also lives on another continent and has a very young GF and a DD the same age as my DS1, so isn't really up for the 'grandfather' role. We will likely only see him once every 5 years, he could never afford to fly here even if he wanted to.
I was very sad over Christmas when DS1 started asking why we don't have family come over like all his preschool friends, it was a very lonely day for us. DH had a row with MIL on the phone a few days prior to Christmas - he NEVER rows with her and usually allows her to manipulate him into feeling bad about her own behavior - I was stunned when he told me he had hung up the phone on her. He apparently asked her why she hadn't sent a card/called/acknowledged DS2's birthday, to which she replied: 'Well he didn't call me on my birthday!'. The child was 20 months old!! Should he have picked up the phone of his own accord? Or should we have dragged him out of bed at 10.30pm, which is the time DH and I called her on account of the time difference in the country she lives??
This cast a big shadow over Christmas for DH (of course, she made no contact, and no card or gifts were sent for the kids). Today, to add insult to injury, we received an email from the woman that DH has long considered to be his 'real' mom - MIL's BFF who never had kids of her own but basically stepped in to be the mom that MIL never was. She bought DH his first drink, lent him money for his first car, and we even made a big deal of making her a 'grandparent' of our kids when they were born as godmother didn't seem a strong enough title. We and the kids adore her and her DH and have always been close.
The email said that MIL had told her that DH had been awful to MIL on the phone call (when he hung up) and that he had 'ruined' MIL's Christmas - she said she'd been ignoring our calls and emails as she didn't want to deal with it - she made it very clear that her loyalty lies with MIL, and that she is prepared to lose DH - who she always called "my son!" - and the kids over it. I am heartbroken as my children have almost no extended family to begin with; to lose her as well feels like a bereavement.
I hate that I brought my kids into such dysfunction. Why do both sides of our families have to be so awful? Every time I see a loving grandparent pick one of DS's classmates up from preschool it stings. When people complain about dealing with the influx of aunts/cousins it aches. Seeing all those lucky people with involved, caring extended families all around us is just heartbreaking. My kids deserve so much better; and it truly rips my heart in two to think that they have so few people to care about them.
Sorry for the pity party. DS1 keeps asking questions about extended family that I am ill-equipped to answer