I want to tell you about what is going on in our family life right now. My husband had a grandmother. So she promised before she died her large three-room apartment to bequeath it to my husband.
We did not understand why she had chosen my husband as an heir. After all, she had many other children and grandchildren. But for some reason she chose him as an heir. And many of her children and grandchildren had problems with housing. And we had already paid our mortgage and had our own place. But my grandmother had her own way. She said she didn’t want the apartment to be sold. She didn’t want anything to change there at all.
– You’ll come and live here when I’m dead. But don’t change anything! Let everything be as it was when I was alive!
Grandmother was a very strict woman and everyone in the family was afraid of her: the children, the grandchildren, and the great-grandchildren. Of course, the decision about the apartment shocked everyone. Everyone was indignant and whispered, but no one dared to oppose her out loud. So my grandmother made a deed of gift to my husband.
After that she lived another two years, and then she died. After the funeral my husband and I moved into her apartment. It’s been five years since then, but we still can’t make repairs there. Although we tried many times to do it.
Both my husband and I have a much closer commute to work from his grandmother’s apartment than from ours. I really like my grandmother’s apartment. I so hoped that when we move in, we will make a good repair there and buy new furniture.
But, alas! It’s not working out for us. As soon as we start just talking about it, it just starts a terrible black streak in our lives. So black, in fact, that we forget about the repairs for a long time.
First our money was stolen, then our apartment, for which you have already paid the mortgage, was flooded by the neighbors, then I was in the hospital, then husband lost his job. What kind of repairs could we talk about? We only had time to solve the problems that were falling on our heads in terrible quantities.
Time passed. My husband found another job. We solved the problems with the repair of the apartment. We got a bonus. And then one evening we were sitting in the kitchen with my husband, having dinner. And he says:
– Let’s already start doing repairs! Let’s go to the store this weekend and choose all the necessary materials for it!
I agreed. And that same evening, fell in the bathroom and broke his arm. When husband was put in a cast and we got home, he told me:
– I get it! Grandma’s doing all this! She doesn’t want us to change anything in her apartment!
I was just shocked. Yes, this apartment used to be in great condition. But since then, it had been many years. The windows were already in terrible condition, the furniture was old, the chandeliers were old. The parquet had already fallen into disrepair.
And a huge amount of crystal everywhere! Once my husband and I tried to put at least the carpets and crystal away in the pantry. But we immediately got into trouble: the washing machine broke, then the TV broke too, then I lost my keys, and then he lost his papers. As soon as we put the crystal back in its place, everything in our lives immediately got better.
Then I tried again to start repairing the apartment. But I broke my leg falling on the flat. I then spent four whole months in a cast. After that my husband and I decided not to do any repairs.
We just painted everything a little bit, that’s all. We live in my grandmother’s apartment, and we’re renting out ours. We are afraid to sell her three-room apartment: we don’t know how Grandma will react, and we don’t want to tempt fate any more. I even glued the windows the old-fashioned way: I plug the cracks with cotton, and then glue them with paper and glue, which I cooked myself.
That’s the situation we have, and how to change it my husband and I do not know. But we are already terribly afraid to take risks…
