Anyone ever tried to get a court order to circumvent a parent with BPD? HELP

[Guest guest]

I have been watching this blog for over a year but I had never felt comfortable

posting before. I probably have so much to share having a textbook case of BPD

father and a mother who was so weak that neither my brother nor myself ever

matterd to either of them. When my brother introduced me to the book, " Surviving

a Borderline Parent, " I could not put the book down because I was amazed that

someone else already wrote my personal life story without even knowing who I

was. The book was mysteriously accurate that it could describe my " perfect "

brother and my weak mother/BPD spouse without ever having entered our

dysfunctional home.

Despite a very painful upbringing with an abusive father and a mother who just

smiled and loved her place in society, my brother and I grew up and achieved

tremendous accomplishments professionally. I am a CPA/MBA/Attorney with my own

firm and my brother is an interventional cardiologist. We became overachievers

just to disprove to ourselves the notion that we were instilled with by our

parents of fractional self worth and esteem.

So now my mother is dying from mesothelioma. I have been in the proverbial NC

mode for several years. My brother has been NC with them for the last year.

There are only two siblings. She is literally wasting away in the hospital with

twenty five pounds of fluid in her chest and insufficient protein within her

body to let her let it drain. She might make it another month or she may be dead

by the time you read this email. My father won't let us see her privately to

say good-bye. She allegedly has informed Rabbis orally and in writing that she

doesn't want to see us either. The reality of course is that my mother is

terrified to death of my father and is scared of him so much that after so man

years pf my BPD father who is only willing to let us see her if he and his two

friend Rabbis are present with us the entire time. Neither my brother or myself

have ever done anything in our entire lives to endanger her or warrant this type

of treatment.

My father has leveraged her death to try to get everyone to consider us

villains. Neither have us have tried to visit her before because our mother

won't even talk to us when he is around and looks at us with tremendous disdain

in fear that if she even demonstrates an infintesimal amount of love, she will

be annihilated by him.

I cannot tell you how painful it had been in the limited conversations that my

brother and I had with her whereby my mother tells me that she has nothing to

live for. I have four children, they are her grandchildren - what have they done

wrong to her? She says that other than my father there is no reason to carry on.

A year before that, my mother excused my father's behavior by stating that

because he is mad about her illness that he DOES have the right to yell, ignore,

and treat me with condescension and disgust when I call to say Hello. Nobody

else believes me that this is real. I can't believe half of the time what I have

lived through. Why did God do this to me? is the question I ask myself every

day. The answer of course is to teach me that I must learn to love myself

because unfortunately my family won't.

As my mother is dying, I feel that I have an obligation to say goodbye and ask

her for forgiveness, this is an obligation I would like to fulfill to help bring

closure to whatever she represented in my life. I feel it is important to me for

both personal reasons as well the religious element of honoring one's parents

despite how evil they have been to me because I was raised to believe that it is

an opprotunity to honor God in the process.

But my BPD father won't let us see her without having him and his buddies be

present. If he is present, then I don't stand a chance of getting to see

anything other than the facade of a woman who is scared to death of

demonstrating any emotion to anyone but him. It is pointless and way too painful

to say goodbye to her like that. I would like to just say good-bye without him

being present.

My brother and I tried meeting with him and these two Rabbis this evening. They

won't let us see her without them present. My brother and I went to the hospital

while he was not there right after the meeting and security would not let us

through because they had a handwritten note from my father not to let us see

her. We called the police to intervene. They could not do anything without a

court order.

The next step would be for me to obtain a court order so that my brother and I

could see my mother just once before she passes away and tell her that we love

her, ask for forgiveness (although quite frankly, compared to my own kids, my

brother and I were really just angels all the time cuz we were both terrified of

my dad belting us) and hope that she will protect our families.

A Rabbi I spoke with strongly recommended that I refrain from increasing the

drama of getting the court order to permit us to visit her prviately. I would

not use the court order and parade it in front of my dad, but when my dad is not

there at the hospital, the security staff will allow us in when we have it.

Rabbi says that it would cause stress to my mother and that is dishonorable. But

wait a second, who is that again? The whole point was to see whether there may

be a semblance of virtue or of love to us when my BPD father is no around. Am I

neither worthy nor deserving of this?

Dear members of this blog, have ANY of you ever tried to get a court order in

such a situation, does it work, is there an alternative? Please share your

thoughts and advice. No-one else can understand how unreal this has been.

I am grateful to all of you for your help, and I hope we all find the strength

to muster the strength within us to learn to love, value, and cherish ourselves

for who we are despite the devastation we have experienced.