Posted on 06/13/2005 2:45:02 AM PDT by Panerai
The Connecticut cousin at the crux of a bitter legal battle between Joan Kennedy and her children said they are exacting ``misery'' on the 68-year-old alcoholic by robbing her of the legal right to run her own life.
``I don't know why they would put their mother through this misery,'' said Webster E. Janssen, a financial planner who began last August to take legal control of his second-cousin's estimated $9 million estate.
The Herald reported yesterday that a Barnstable Probate & Family Court judge late Friday approved a settlement agreement crafted by lawyers for Joan Kennedy and her kids - Kara Kennedy, 45, Edward M. Kennedy Jr., 43, and U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.), 37, to resolve the case.
The last-minute deal fends off a public trial set to begin this morning in which the kids were expected to testify their mother's struggle with alcohol is so desperate she needs a permanent legal guardian.
The court also set strict conditions the former wife of U.S. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) must follow to stay sober, and approved two trusts to hold her assets while her estate is sorted out by a pair of newly appointed trustees.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.bostonherald.com ...
Not always easy.
Joan used to be a real beautiful girl. It all seemed to go down with the Olds Delta 88.
My own personal guess is that a whole lot of people misunderestimate the devastation and severity of chronic alcohol abuse -- both in terms of the way it trashes families and in terms of the way it trashes the abusers ability to think.
If Joan is going to drink away her ability to function autonomously and responsibly, I don't see that it is necessarily selfish or wrong for her children to go to law to limit her autonomy.
A long time ago I suggested to a professional care giver that a mutual acquaintance was an alcoholic. The care giver was emphatic not only in his disagreement but in his expression that there was something wrong abut my making the suggestion.
About five years later, the care-giver went into treatment for chemical dependency.
The moral? Keep your eyes on the people who get all upset when somebody actually tries to do something about chemical dependency -- and count your change ...
Janssen said for the past year Joan Kennedy has been attended to round-the-clock by two females - one who stays with her on the Cape and another in the Back Bay.
Granted that this statement isn't in quotations but that doesn't stop me from wondering how Joan eluded the 'zookeepers' & ended up on the sidewalk in March.
They are a sad, pathetic bunch.
Being a Massachusetts resident, I dislike the Kennedys because of what they stand for politically, but I wouldn't wish their problems on them for even a second. One can only feel pity for people who have so lost touch, and it is too easy to blame their attitudes and behavior their family exhibits on the tragedies in their family, instead of the other way around.
I look at them in the same way I look at Michael Jackson. This family is a cautionary tale of what fame and money can do to you.
It also reinforces that old saying that money won't buy you happiness. You look at them, and think "Ain't THAT the truth..."
You are probably right. But it does seem they let her drink for years {we really don't know what they did during those years} but soon as she planned to sell her big house in Hyanis and maybe spend the money or give it away, suddenly there was an emergency. Their eye is on the money in my opinion. But she may still need a guardianship.
My guess is that the down trend began the day that Teddy entered her life.
You hit the nail on the head with that one.
The Kennedys lobotomised Teddys sister, Teddy hasnt got that excuse.
Agreed. Poor Joan. I believe she became alcohol dependant as a way to evade facing the truth about her philandering husband and the real story she knew about Mary Jo Kopechne and Chappaquiddick. After years of drinking, divorce, etc. her dependency became Teddy’s cover. I mean, who would ever believe the recollections of someone who was declared “incapable” of managing her own life? (Secretly, Teddy wants her discredited.)
The kids have been subjected to his thought process, but probably do not really know the real facts behind it. They have become pawns in the Kennedy cover up game. Even though there is also the definite interest in the money I am sure they have been convinced that Mom is/was always “sick” and Dad is the poor suffering good guy. It is a typical web spun by the likes of personalities such as a Ted Kennedy.
... they let her drink ...Ever try to STOP somebody from drinking? If it's in your family, it takes a LONG time to understand that the alcohol abuse is a key part of the problem. For one thing, if your parents have achieved a BAC of, say, .08 or higher nearly every night of your life, you don't realize they're "impaired". You think that's normal adult behavior -- because it's normal in your house. ALL adults are emotionally labile, self-absorbed, manipulative histrionic assholes after about 5:30 in the evening. At least, MY adults are .. says the 8 year old.
So, then maybe one day you figure it out. But it's a safe bet that at least one of your sibs (and possibly all of them) will be "OUTRAGED that you would say such a thing about Mother -- outraged! YOU'RE the one who needs help. YOU're no saint, you know ...." And so forth.
That can take a decade or two to work through -- even in a family without reporters behind every aspidistra.
Now we've reached the stage where there is general family agreement that Mom has a chemical dependency problem. The debate about what would be an appropriate response begins. "How can you suggest that Mom be institutionalized. She's had enough pain and humiliation in her life and now YOU want to put her (and us) through THAT?"
And when those debates are resolved and the first five stints in Sister Suzi's Shelter for Soused Society Sots don't work because it's focussed more on protecting one's social register listing than on dealing with the issue, half the family decides that ALL treatment centers are useless.
The decades of dealing with this have left the siblings LESS able to work with one another and demoralized by repeated and painful evidence of their failure to solve the problem. They are morally punch drunk.
Finally mother is found sprawling in the gutter or photographed hauling bums into her parlour for drinks and giggles. Again, while some of the family are ready to go to law to gain control of her affairs, others are just throwing up their hands and turning their back on the whole thing. Yet others are STILL thinking that if they wait until she sobers up and they have a really meaningful heart to heart talk, they can resolve this thing. And one daughter is hoping nobody notices the split lip she gave her Mom when Mom's insult's finally broke her self-control as she was cleaning Mom up and trying top put her in bed.
FINALLY desparation produces momentary unanimity, and despite the real sense that they will be vilified by family friends and they may lose EVERYTHING in court, everything - mother, love, family, money, friends, the whole deal, they decide to risk it all.
And the public says, "Well, why didn't you do something earlier ....?
My guess would be they've been working on this for decades.
Fame and money only give you more freedom and more choices. When you can choose to do almost anything you can dream of, you don't always make the best choices. You end up facing yourself for what you really are by the choices you make. The Bible says it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Seems like the old Bible is right again.
Conversely, those who don't have certain choices should not pat themselves on the back for not taking them.
Very nice writing! You really painted a picture of what living with an alcoholic or otherwise impaired person must be like. Extremely sad.
You are probably dead on. It just seems that everyone knows she has been a drunk on and off. And now the second cousin comes in, she is selling her big house without the kids knowing it and that has moved them to try to get a guardianship. Either the second cousin is a saint or he is on the make. But the kids do seem to have turned their back until this latest happening. Sad thing.
I never liked that Bible verse about the rich man getting into heaven harder than a poor man and never believed it for a minute. Just said to cool off the pooor guys who are envious of the rich in my opinion.
Poor people can be drunks just as easily as rich. They just end up sprawled on the street in worse neighborhoods. And most rich people do make the right decisions about things. Money enables them to do some good stuff. Poor people don't have exclusive rights to goodness or decency.
Thanks. I'm really interested in the "system" or what I sometimes think of as "emotional economics" of family dysfunction, and especially when there is a "star of the show" thing going on. And I'm interested in how it repeats through the generations. I was very impressed as a young man when a very nice and attractive, almost "saintly" widow of an alcoholic up and married another self-destructive, self-absorbed guy.
Then there's the way it looks from the outside compared to the way it looks and feels to the players. To the caregiver a wife comes in and in 30 minutes gives a complete clinical description of a chemically dependent husband. So the caregiver says, "Well, I'm in contact with some treatment centers for alcoholism, and I think we can really help him."
The wife's first reaction (or the kids' or employer's or whosever) is,"Who said he's an alcoholic? He's just (choose one) tired/ sensitive/ stressed/ depressed/ unfulfilled." Or they think it's THEIR fault or inadequacy or whatever.
How we fail to see what's in front of our noses fascinates and terrifies me.
Well said!
Yeh, I guess.
The Kennedys are the Uthurian tale writ large. Honey Fitz sewed these seeds and they have produced the evil fruit.
The Kennedy Dynasty never happened. There are now more Bushes who are/were Presidents than Kennedys and there are more Bushes in the wings.
The Kennedy family is no more (and that is a good thing for America).
I have also seen those family dynamics. It has shown me that Only the impaired person can make the decision to change the direction of his/her life.
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