#everyone, I urge you to read the previous post.
For those who won't click on the link, here are a few excerpts:
"Aunt Jane. As a first cousin of my mother’s, she wasn’t even technically my aunt. My mother and she were raised, having both been left motherless as babes, with their unkind mutual grandmother, and were very much like sisters. Not the close kind of sisters, but the kind of sisters who tolerate each other with very little love involved. They remained in close proximity until the ends of their lives, despite their mixed feelings." .... "Mom did not score big in the mother department – her birth mother died when she was still a baby, the grandmother who then cared for her resented her, and her eventual stepmother could only love a child she had born herself."
Somehow, she became a loving being despite a lack of love all around her. Jane and she eventually became equal part owners of the lake property, with one third in the hands of a third cousin. My sister and I are now in the very same boat, same proportions of ownership, one third elsewhere. Thankfully, she and I don't fight nearly as much as my mother and Jane did. A bit here and there, largely because text and email communication is so easily misread.