My SIL is claiming my ageing mother’s belongings, I think it's disgusting

"I mean Mum might be old, but she isn’t on her last legs. The thought of someone doing this in her presence is just wrong on so many levels," Nicole tells Kidspot.

To say my SIL, *Nicole and my siblings and I were raised differently is an understatement. 

While I've grown to accept her as my brother, Kyle’s wife, I have never really liked her, or understood what he sees in her but as long as she makes him happy, my view has always been just to respect his choice and let it be.

Recently though my ability to do this has been put to the test and frankly, I’m not sure how much longer I can keep doing it.

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"It started when she put red stickers on the bottom of items"

It all started to become an issue when I was around at my mum’s house one weekend and I noticed red stickers stuck on the bottom of different items.

I first observed a crystal vase with one of these stickers on it because the red really stood out. Then I also saw that an ornament that sat on the mantlepiece had been moved from where it usually sat and when I picked it up to move it back, I saw another sticker underneath this too.

I asked Mum what they were there for and she replied that Nicole had put them on there, but she couldn’t really remember why she did it.

My mum, who is in her 80s now, is physically very healthy. She could probably do a triathlon if she wanted. Mentally though, her memory isn’t great, and she often gets confused about things, so her not remembering these sorts of details wasn’t surprising or unusual.

Perplexed, I asked my other siblings if they knew what was going on and the answer I got, well it left me absolutely disgusted.

Kyle told me that when he and Nicole visited last, she had placed the stickers on there to claim which items they wanted when mum passed away. He said to me that because Mum wants all of her belongings to be shared equally, Nicole had thought it would be helpful for her to identify their preferences so that when it came time, the process would be easier.

So, their last visit had Nicole wandering around our mum’s house with a packet of stickers, choosing what she wanted as if it was some sort of registry.

I honestly couldn’t believe what I was hearing when Kyle shared this with me. I mean Mum might be old, but she isn’t on her last legs, far from it. The thought of someone doing this, in her presence, like Nicole couldn’t wait for her to fall off her perch so she could score a bounty was just wrong on so many levels.

But before I even had a chance to air my grievances about this, Kyle told me he would share the Google Docs list Nicole had made for items that couldn’t have stickers put on them. 

Yep, that’s right, Nicole had created a Google Docs list with all the delicate items or pieces that she couldn’t ‘sticker’, including jewellery, and she shared it with me and my other siblings, with her name next to what she wanted.

She then advised us to do the same, next to what we preferred, all in the name of efficiency, she said.

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"She said 'it needs to be done at some point anyway'"

I sat on my growing feelings of disgust for a few days, trying to calm down and not to overreact but as time went on, I didn’t feel better about any of it, I felt worse.

In the end, I called Kyle and told him what I thought about the whole thing. I told him it was disgusting and gross and just not appropriate or respectful. But he stood up for Nicole and replied, "It needs to be done at some point anyway so what is the harm?"

I also spoke to Nicole about it when I saw her next and she couldn’t understand what the issue was and why I thought it wasn’t right. She was on a completely different wavelength to me about it and stood her ground.

None of my siblings thinks what Nicole is doing is right either but they don’t want to get involved or want to say anything, so they have just stayed quiet and I am left to stew about the whole thing, with a rising tension between Kyle and me which we never had before. 

And to add to it all there is the ever-growing presence of red dots appearing at Mum’s house every time I visit, oh and a lengthy Docs list too.

*All names have been changed for privacy reasons.

Originally published as My SIL is claiming my ageing mother’s belongings, I think it's disgusting