Dear Prudence,
I can’t seem to stop thinking about an incident that happened many years ago between my mother, my sibling (“Stella”), and me. It still bothers me and makes me wary of being in their company every time we get together. Years ago, for a milestone birthday, Stella and I treated our mother to an expensive trip to a faraway city. My mother has mobility issues, so we rented a mobility aid for her to get around in the city. I also arranged in advance for a special, once-in-a-lifetime type of tour of the city that would accommodate my mother’s mobility aid.
Stella, unbeknownst to us, was using the time as a “working vacation” and had scheduled several meetings that interfered with plans to tour the city. Even though we were unpleasantly surprised by this, my mom insisted that we should all be together (instead of splitting up so that Stella could work while we did our sightseeing), which meant that she and I ended up waiting around for Stella to be ready to leave the hotel most days. On the day of the tour that I had arranged, Stella’s meeting dragged on, and then she was “too tired” to go on the tour. After a lot of arguing back and forth between us, Stella called the tour company and canceled the tour. I was angry, and my mom was disappointed.
Fast forward to the end of the vacation: The mobility aid had to be returned before we left the city. I offered to take it back to the rental place and left my mom and sister at the hotel. We caught our flights home the next day. Weeks after we returned from the trip, after a couple of glasses of wine, my mom revealed that on the day that I returned the mobility aid, she and Stella took a tour (the very same tour that I booked for all of us) WITHOUT ME. She and Stella agreed to keep it a secret from me “because I would have gotten mad anyway” if they had told me. I was literally speechless and overcome with shock and rage! I felt so hurt and betrayed that I didn’t talk to my sister for months, even though my mother urged me to “just forgive her already.”
Needless to say, this has severely eroded my trust in my mother and sister. As far as they’re concerned, everything is fine now. We’ve never really spoken about it, but it still really bothers me. I want to bring it up with them to get it off my chest, but would I be beating a dead horse? I’m not sure how to approach them to have this discussion. Is it even worth it at this point?