I Pray No Other Woman Has To Suffer What My Mom Did!

It is ironic how women in the same home do not think twice before harassing a woman who left her parents and family behind to live with her husband.

“My daughter needs a husband who listens to her. He should leave his family to stay with her after marriage. He should be well-off and not let her do chores.”

“I also need an obedient daughter-in-law, who will be an unpaid servant and a punching bag who shouldn’t have a life of her own.”

Elders are set in their ways, and that’s expected. But when they act entitled and ungrateful, how much is too much?

My grandmother, the mother in law

My grandmother (dad’s side) moved in with my family after her husband passed away. I didn’t like her much and was unhappy when my parents told me she’ll stay with us.

Why? I know he and his wife terrorized my mother and treated her like a slave whenever we visited her. She asked my mother to stop working and stay home when pregnant. She took all my mother’s jewelry (that her parents gave her) and hasn’t given it back to her. She threatened to separate my parents when my brother was in my mom’s womb. She never used to give my mom privacy. She used to eavesdrop whenever my mom called her parents.

My mother used to stay with her in-laws before my parents had to move to another place for my father’s work.

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Since we didn’t stay with them, they took their chance whenever we visited, and the fights terrified me. They treated my mother’s parents poorly. And most importantly, my father never supported my mother or said a word against them. He joined them in ridiculing her. My mother (a stay-at-home mom) experienced a lot of torture from her in-laws, causing her emotional trauma.

My mother – my grandmother’s caregiver now

Fast forward to now, my grandmother (aged 75) has been living with my family for three years. She is bedridden, and my mother helps her with all her daily chores.

As she was living alone and bedridden, my mother felt bad and decided to take her in, despite the poor treatment in the past.

I thought I’ll give her a chance, set all prejudices aside, and interact. I felt bad. She is old and to be respected, at least for his age. But after each interaction, I started realizing that she would be gaining more and more of my hatred.

I noticed that it was always about her and her needs. But never about how my mom or I felt. She calls for me like she is concerned but orders me to do a chore for her, like a maid. She mostly complains about the news and the increasing wrongdoings in society. She also “calls out” today’s women for wearing sleeveless tops and short skirts. Or how to her, it’s “shameful” to be a lesbian!

I hate listening to her rant. I understand she needs a lot of support since she’s old and unable to walk, but it has got irritating over time. The main reason is that she superficially thanks my mom but complains behind her back.

For her, her daughters (who literally kicked her out when she asked to stay with them) are the most important. She celebrates them and her son, but when it comes to the DIL who cleans and feeds him, she feels no regret in making the most use of her kind-heartedness.

She never feels content. Even after we go to the moon and back to keep her comfortable, even though she doesn’t deserve it. Whenever she chats with her relatives, I’ve never seen her say she is happy. She always complains. She says she barely eats (as though her DIL never feeds her). But when her daughter visits her with food, she talks about it for days. Her daughter never offers to take her home but shows off by barging into my home with food.

I’ve seen my mother helping her so much, losing her peace of mind. I pray that no woman has to go through what my mom did and still does. I love my mom. I appreciate her kind heart. But she has nowhere else to go since her life is my family.

I wish my mother could have severed ties with my father and his family when she got the chance. She was worried about society and raising my brother and me.

I pray no other woman has to go through what my mom did.

International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women has just gone by. I hope Indian women start by treating their daughters-in-law right.

Image source: A still from the film Badhaai Ho

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