“You are a guest in their marriage and a guest in their home. You have to fold into their rules and their lives if you want to be welcome there.” ~ Dr. Phil

Starting a marriage is hard when you’ve been married before. Two mature adults with different pasts and different ways of getting things done.

Throw in a father-in-law who retired as a master sergeant with the beginnings of dementia and it can become almost unbearable.

His father was living with him when we met and married. At 86, his second wife had passed away from breast cancer. Whether grief, age or forgetfulness, he had forgotten to eat and was found down at home with a blood glucose of 38. At that time, ‘the family’ decided that he needed to sell his house and move. The Veteran’s Home has a waiting list of 2+ years. My husband was the child elected to host him.

This is the beginning of where this rubs me the wrong way: Three children – two girls, one boy. The oldest daughter is married, and they have a small hobby farm but she was diagnosed with breast cancer, so he couldn’t stay with them. The next daughter is single, no children at home, has a 3-bedroom home and was the one who decided he should sell his house, but he couldn’t stay with her. There you go. . . he was shuttled off to stay with my husband and his former wife, who also had breast cancer and passed away. While the former Mrs. was on hospice, the single daughter let her daddy stay with her, but sent him back shortly after my husband’s former wife passed, not even 30 days because “she couldn’t handle him.”

When we married, my husband hinted, suggested and flat out asked if his father could stay elsewhere for a few days to give us a chance for some type of a honeymoon, to no avail. There was always a ready excuse . . . and we were told that “daddy isn’t that bad, he’s just ‘putting on’ to get sympathy.”

Really?

• Gradnddaddy wakes up several times at night to use the bathroom, and started opening our bedroom door at 2:30 and 3:30 in the morning, whispering to the dogs, asking if they needed to go out. Ummmmm . . . NO!
• We now lock our bedroom door and he grouses that we lock the dogs up at night so he can’t let them out for a midnight run, despite the fact that my husband has told him the dogs sleep all night until we get up.
• One of the dogs had a sour stomach and was whining to go outside about 1:30 in the morning, and when I opened the door, granddaddy was standing just on the other side. Keep in mind, his rooms are across the other side of the house. Creepy!!
• We had taken the dogs out for a drive and stopped to get them a ‘pup cup’ as a treat. When we returned home, granddaddy insisted that the dogs had been home and he had gotten up several times to let them out.
• He got upset after I kept removing a paper towel from underneath the microwave turntable. I had determined that the rotate/rotate off button was just above the start button and had probably gotten hit inadvertently. My husband explained it but he was adamant that “_______ (the former wife) said that was the only way you could get the turntable to rotate!”
• He has thrown my mail away, opened packages addressed to me, and held my mail up to the light attempting to see who it’s from. I’ve not received checks, debit cards, credit cards and important items due to him throwing my stuff away. When my husband told him to stop, he got snippy: “I guess I’m overstepping my bounds.”
• We like to sit out by the pool in the evenings and talk or swim. We purposely only turn the pool lights on for privacy as it’s far enough away from the house that you cannot see clearly. Without fail, those are the nights his dad decides to sit outside on the back porch.
• If we go out for a late dinner, go outside to swim, or just go for a ride to get coffee and get away from the house and it’s past 8 pm, we get the “don’t you think it’s a little late for that?” My husband will reply, “Daddy! We are grown ass adults.”

The Veterans Home now has a room available for granddaddy, and that old coot has done everything to sabotage it. He took his Care Plan to his cardiologist instead of his primary care doctor, missing the paperwork deadline on purpose. My husband called the social worker at the Veterans Home to give her a heads up and she scheduled his x-ray and faxed the paperwork to his primary care physician and made his appointment. Good Lord, you’d think we’d cancelled his birthday and Christmas! He’s been pouting around the house, staying in his room, refusing to come out, taking food to his room and generally acting like a toddler.

My husband has actually started counting down the days. Me, being from the Show-Me State, will believe it when I see it.

Next post I’ll discuss what it’s like cleaning out the former spouse’s belongings while her estate is tied up in probate. It’s almost as bad as dealing with a father-in-law on tap.