[SisterSurvivor]

(sorry, I can’t work out how to edit my previous post, which is pretty much unreadable!)

Does anyone have any ideas, please, on what we can do for/about my dead brother’s partner?

They were together for more than 10 years but he died, brutally suddenly, last year. We knew for years that she had an issue with alcohol – she’d ended up in hospital a couple of times because of it – but after he died, she went into freefall, really.

It probably wasn’t just about her missing my brother and losing her future, but because she’d relied on him so much: she has a health condition that makes it difficult for her to hold down a job, and she struggles with anxiety, and she’s always been really shy and insecure, and she basically ‘hid’ behind him.

We were happy for her to stay living in my brother’s house until she was ready to go on with her life, but after a few months it became clear she wasn’t really safe to be left on her own. She’d be off her face for days, and did things like passing out over the kitchen doorstep in the depths of winter. (Fortunately, it was a neighbour, rather than a murderer/rapist/burglar who spotted her, before she’d had chance to freeze to death.) She came close to killing herself once; even though she said she wanted to be with my brother, we’re still not sure whether she was actively trying to kill herself or just really, really unhappy. She also ‘disappeared’ for the best part of two weeks; her sister found out she’d been hanging out with the sort of people you really wouldn’t want your sister associating with, especially when she’s bereaved and vulnerable.

We felt really awful, as though we’d not looked after her well enough, but we felt we had no choice but to get her living back with her parents in a town a few miles away. We thought she would be ‘safe’ with them. But less than a handful of months later we found out from her cousin that she was back in hospital; she’d got herself a new man (met him on facebook, apparently) and ended up unconscious at the bottom of the stairs while staying with him. Even now we’re not sure of the exact circumstances, whether the cause was alcohol-related or something more sinister. We don’t, by the way, have any problem at all with her getting into another relationship – it’s not like her being miserable for the rest of her life would make my brother any less dead, is it?

We just want her to be happy, as secure and settled as she was with my brother and, if possible, healthier than she was while he was around (ie no longer dependent on alcohol). Does anyone have any ideas on how we could use my brother’s money to make that happen, please?

The easiest thing would be to give her a chunk of money and leave her to it, but as far as we know, she’s still drinking, and my brother would go berserk at the thought of us using his hard-earned money to give her the means to properly drink herself to death. (The last time she ended up in hospital before he died he was seriously thinking about splitting up with her because: “I couldn’t go through that again”. Turns out he didn’t have to, just not in the way he meant.)

There’s also the concern that it might not be her that ended up benefiting from my brother’s money: according to her cousin, when her parents gave her some birthday money, she used it to get the new boyfriend’s gold ring back from a pawn shop. That said, that information might be unreliable, as the cousin may be a bit jealous of the new man (she was my brother’s partner’s main drinking buddy). We haven’t seen her since she took up with this bloke, so we have no idea whether it’s a genuine relationship and he’s looking after her properly (which would be great), or he’s taking advantage of her because she’s so vulnerable, and/or she’s living with him because she feels she’s nowhere else to go because she couldn’t cope with living with her parents after, in effect, running her own household. In an ideal world, I suppose we could find some way of providing her with a place of her own, either buying or long-term renting, but there just doesn’t seem to be anything available like that, not for un-disabled people in their 30s, anyway.

We could give the money to her parents, or just ask their advice, but I’m not sure even they know what to do with/for/about her anymore. But, also, they have a third child, a son, who is always lurching from crisis to crisis, and if they had the money there might be the temptation to ‘borrow’ it ‘for a little while’ to help him out, especially as he has a wife and a couple of young children. (Sounds really heartless of me, I know, but my brother absolutely detested him, and would get really cross that he kept expecting his parents to bail him/his family out rather than sort out the mess he’d made for himself.)

We really are our wits’ end about the best thing/s to do, for her and for my dead brother. I’d be sooo grateful for any advice and thoughts, please.

Sorry for the long post, but it seemed important to give the fullest picture possible of the problem we’re looking for help with.

(ps I’ve had real problems signing up for this forum, so if I fail to respond asap to anyone kind enough to reply, I’m really sorry, but the computer gremlins have struck again but I’ll do my best to ‘beat’ them!)

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