Cousin I Haven’t Heard Fron

 I have a cousin who turns 55 in October, and my mom and I were talking recently and mentioned we have not heard from her. This was a couple weeks ago. My mom called me to tell me that she asked around about how this cousin was, and one piece of shocking news was that her husband died in August of 2023. The even more shocking news was that this cousin of mine, who is now widowed, is living in a group home. 

I couldn’t even believe what I was hearing. Nothing is wrong with her that she needs to live in a group home. She is both a talented artist and a smart businesswoman, and has had a lot of successful endeavors in her life. Many of those endeavors have been charitable.  So when I heard “group home”, my first thought was that she opened it and was running it herself. But no, it was clarified. She isn’t running a group home, she lives in one. 

She’s originally from east St. Louis, Illinois but the group home is in the Texas panhandle near Amarillo. She has a sister that lives elsewhere in north Texas, and this sister of hers is absolutely a terrible person. Their parents are deceased and neither one of them ever had children. My mom said “Well she just went nuts after her husband died, and apparently can’t take care of herself.”  

My mom sounded flippant when she told me. I am still extremely uneasy about this. She’s always been able to take care of herself. To me it sounds like she did have a pretty strong grief reaction when he died two years ago, and her terrible sister used it to manipulate her into this situation. It also sounds like maybe her sister wanted access to her money. Her sister would absolutely, 100% pull some garbage like that  

I didn’t tell my mom my suspicions. Of course it is possible that she really did lose her mind. But grieving your spouse is actually number one on the adverse experiences list. I have a strong feeling she should have gotten way more support than she did. I would really like to find out where she is so that I can go visit her myself. When we were kids, she babysat for me a lot. She was a fun person to be around. The thought of being manipulated into losing your basic freedoms is terrifying. I really hope I can go see her someday, but I’m not sure if it would be a HIPAA Violation for someone to let me know where exactly this place is.