I finally talked to husband about the way he's been talking trash about me to his family. Even after I spent three weeks with them 24/7 during their mother's death and funeral. I've taken years of emotional and verbal abuse and even some physical and just begun to realize how awful it is (I've quietly begun meeting with a lawyer). My own mother died in the exact same circumstances only a year before and he did nothing for my family during HER lingering death (well, he did cook dinner one night -- he is "the kitchen god", he tells me this often).

Anyway, he's been raging at me non-stop since her death a year because he felt I hadn't done enough and for a helluva alot of other nonsense. I was the one who talked to the nurses and doctors for them. I was the one who nudged the family (seven stunned siblings and a shocked 84 year old immigrant father) into acceptance. I was the one who held them as the fell to pieces. I was there every day except the morning after, when I stayed at the hotel to rest. And for this he was FURIOUS. His big comment "what do you want, a halo?"

So I told him how brutalizing the whole experience was and how it had ripped open the still fresh wounds of my own mother's death. How I had done it because after the immense pain of my mother's death, and how much love and respect I had for his mother (she truly was a wonderful woman -- she never knew what a her son was) I truly wanted to spare them any tiny bit of pain I could.

He did apologize. And then seconds later he attacked me on something different. Recently he told me that his sister had called me demanding and selfish. He insists that I had "made him" tell me that. He repeated that very emphatically today. Saying that I "wanted" to know that and that "You NEED to know that YOU MADE me tell you that. I did NOT want to tell you that."

I started keening and crying while he walked away. Why do I even try? Why? Why? Sometimes I just want to burn the house down and run and run......