So Now What? (We interrupt this blog to bring you some Random Intrusive Daddy Issues...)

Today was supposed to be my Now What day.  I took the LSAT yesterday, and my plan was that once that was over, I’d get busy making concrete plans for what’s next, what do I do now, how do I get my life sorted out and back on track?  I’ve got a business plan to formulate, and a book proposal/publication plan to think out, and a magic tournament I aim to win, and plans to make for quality time with my kids for the rest of the summer.  I was going to wake up today bright and bushy-tailed, and get back to the business of taking on the world…

But the LSAT took a lot more out of me than I expected.  I knew it would be physically and mentally draining, I KNEW that, but I went in doing it as kind of a lark, and wasn’t expecting there to be an emotional toll, as well.  I (told myself) that I just wanted to take it so I’d know what it was really like and could do a better job of preparing my students and tutoring clients.  I still have half a mind to try law school, but I knew that I could just show up and get the kind of score I needed to get into any of the local schools that are feasible for me to attend, but I still felt like I should practice a little, and did invest half a Sunday working on that.   (That sounds pretty arrogant, but I do teach the class, and I’m not one of those ‘if you can, do, if you can’t teach,’ kind of teachers.  And for perspective, the local schools don’t ask for much above the 50^th percentile; they’re just happy to get competent people who want to enroll.)

That being said, in the moment, while it was happening, and even more so after it was over, I discovered that something inside of me is still fighting for a stupid dream I had (Harvard, baby) that is no longer an option, but that I apparently haven’t quite managed to let go.  I obviously didn’t practice enough to make sure I hit that mark, because even though I know I can correctly answer every damn question on that test, IF I have enough time, it’s an endurance ordeal, and a time-management nightmare, and you have to seriously prepare for that part of it.  And I deliberately didn’t allow myself do the work I’d need to pull it off.  Because I knew it wouldn’t matter, and it wasn’t a good investment of my time, and (I think now) that obtaining that magic score would just cause a dramatic and pointless mental crisis over Lost Things that I can’t get back.  So I didn’t really try, I knew I wasn’t trying, and I thought I’d be OK with that, but I feel pretty awful about the whole thing now; I was fooling myself again.  And I could handle that, and observe it and process it, and not let it disrupt the Now What game, if that was the only thing going on, but there are other Lost Things that I have to deal with first.  Now What has to wait until tomorrow.

It’s my daddy’s birthday today.  If he was here, he’d be turning 68, and if the universe made sense, if anything was fair, we’d have spent the morning finishing a cake (carrot cake was his favorite,) and loading up a picnic for some kind of barbecue extravaganza, probably at Benson park, where the kids could play in the water and fight over the pouch couches (and we could go diving for our lost GoPro, but that’s a different tale…) and he could try to teach them how to fish, and the grownups could play cards, and we’d have a grand old time celebrating with Poppy, and we’d all end up sunburnt (especially Poppy) and exhausted but entertained.  He should be spending the summer helping the oldest boys fix up busted cars, and admiring the girls’ drawings, and I’m sure Jester would have got him roped into playing Magic by this point, and they’d be scheming up ridiculous, terrible nonsense commander decks.  He never even got to meet the little one, but I imagine they would swing together, and she would make him play Barbies and chatter his ears clean off.  Poor baby doesn’t have any grandpas, which is so hard for me to fathom, because my grandpas were pretty much the most important people in my life when I was her age.  She doesn’t know what she is missing, but I do…

Because he’s not here.  It’s been almost 9 years since he’s been here, but he SHOULD be, and that’s what I have to get off my chest.  It’s the You Can’t Pass Go until you do this thing THING, and name this thing, and feel this thing, and say this thing “out loud.”  So, here it goes, this is what I have to say:

My dad was the kindest, most patient, understanding, and self-sacrificial person I’ve never known.  He was funny, he was sweet, he was creative and resourceful, and he had all of these big dreams, a lot of which I never even knew about until he was gone.  He wanted to open a little restaurant one day.  That’s the one that floored me, because it shouldn’t have been a surprise.  He cooked most of what got cooked in our home, and he always volunteered to work the kitchen at our Girl Scout Jamborees.  His camp name was Cookie, I thought he was just trying to be involved.  I never realized how much he loved it, and if I had known, I might have skipped out on grad school to stay home and do that with him, because that would have been so much fun.  (And since neither of ever managed to learn a damn thing about business or money, it would have been an epic financial failure; but still, it would have been fun.)  But I didn’t know, I didn’t have a clue what he wanted, because he never really spoke up for himself, and he was always so damn busy…

My whole life, my dad was busy, taking care of everyone else.  When I was a kid, he went to school and worked; when he finished his degree, he just worked for people who often didn't appreciate him, and he always had these god-awful long commutes.  And most nights (it couldn’t have actually been most nights, but it felt like most nights) he’d get home, eventually we might have dinner, and then he’d be out until the wee hours of the morning working one of our damned constantly-busted cars, trying to diagnose weird noises my mom was bitching about, rebuilding transmissions, keeping our Frankenstein's monster cars alive.  He had every parts store in the region’s number memorized… And he’d have work he brought home to do, and he’d run around catering to whatever nonsense my mom dreamed up, and at some point they both got involved not with helping, but actually RUNNING the softball league, which sounds like cool parental involvement, but was really parental abandonment because it was a MASSIVE time investment in a hobby that my sister was already done with, and that I was wrapping up, because it took up all of their nights once it started; they were always off in meetings somewhere, or on the phone getting yelled at by coaches and parents, or organizing tournaments that neither one of was a part of, and that’s where things were when I left home...

And nothing ever got easier for him.  His kids didn’t succeed at this whole growing up thing the way that we should have.  He tried to start his own engineering business, but that didn’t work out.  He at least got a big house to mess around with and work on, and room for a shop, and he was building a random forge and trying to figure out how to get permits to run a smithy...

The year before he died, things were especially hard.  He was exhausted, and I could see it, and I was worried but I didn’t know what I could possibly do, except for try not to add more things to his load.   He was doing every damn thing for everyone, for my mom and my sister and her kids, and his mom, and his mother-in-law.  He’d work all week, and almost every Saturday, at least, head out to Grandma’s house in Rowena to work on projects for her.  And when that wasn’t happening, my mom would send him to Grandma Nick’s house to do projects for her (that she, at least, didn’t like to ask him to do.  She felt like he had enough and didn’t speak up.  My mom would get mad at her and scold her for that, and say “Jim can do it, why didn’t you say something?” and assign him another chore.) 

He did all the cooking at home, all of the shopping, he made my mom’s breakfasts and packed her lunches, and ran the laundry back and forth up the stairs.  He did, by himself, almost all the chores that needed to be done, chores that other people in the house were perfectly capable of doing for themselves.  And he came down to stay with me a few times when things were bad in California, and I was all on my own, to help me with the kids and my stupid car, and to make sure I was OK.  But HE wasn’t OK, I knew he wasn’t, and I was so scared.  I told my friend a week before he collapsed that I was afraid he was going to have a heart attack any day, and I didn’t know what to do except worry, and I still feel bad that I didn’t try to do more.

He was tired all the time, he had something going on with his back and was in a horrible amount of pain, and was trying some crazy experimental (dangerous) traction therapy to help with that.  He was starting to develop food sensitivities.  And some asshole doctor told him that his problem was low-testosterone, so he was apparently taking supplements for that (which is bullshit, because he had a congenital heart defect that almost killed him as a child; and that stuff is definitely NOT good for the heart.)  And most of all he was WORRIED all the time about his stupid kids, and the messes we were making, about my sister’s dependency issues, and my divorce apocalypse, and the hurt we were inflicting on each other, and he didn’t know what to do about any of it, so he just keep doing.  I can’t even describe how much guilt I feel over stressing him out so much.  I did my best to not ask for things from him, and to let them all cast me as the straight-up villain in our family drama, not to explain myself, not to defend myself, just to let them all hate me if they needed to, so at least (I thought) my poor daddy wouldn’t feel like he had to choose sides.  But it wasn’t enough… I don’t know what I could have done that would have been enough, and no one else seemed to notice that it was a problem.

At his funeral, my mom’s stupid “best friend”--this crazy lady who had been hanging around since I was a kid, who I’m not even sure actually liked my mom at all, but was CLEARLY in love with my dad, and fawned over his every move and word and breath of air, even though he found her very obnoxious and did his very best to avoid her—anyway, this lady gave an extended eulogy about how he was the perfect Christ-like man, the best man who ever lived.  How he gave everything of himself, and never asked anything in return.  (There was also a pointed critique in there about what she really thought of my mom and how she treated daddy.  It was incredibly awkward, but I can’t say it wasn’t accurate.  It was just incredibly bad timing.)  And Diana was right, in a lot of ways; he was infinitely loving and infinitely giving, right up until his last breath, but he was those things to a fault.

He never told anyone “no,” he never said “not right now,” he never said “I’m too tired,” or “why don’t you try and do it yourself first, and I’ll help you if need it,” or “I actually had something else I was hoping to do today, can we do that tomorrow?”   He always sighed and said yes, and then he got to work.  And they, THEY, I guess we, never stopped asking him, demanding things, finding new projects for him to work on, making new problems for him to solve.  So what happens when you take a really nice man, with no boundaries and no sense of his own worth, and throw him in with a bunch of vampires?  What happens is that they will eventually bleed him dry.

And that’s exactly what happened.  My dad didn’t intentionally sacrifice himself to save us, he just got used up.  I remember that stupid day like it wasn’t even yesterday, like it was still today, like somehow it’s still happening, like it’s always happening right now, all the time, and I can’t stop it or fix it or change it, it just IS, and it always will be.  

It was a 100 fucking degrees in Troutdale, and supposed to get hotter.  We had planned to go down to Springfield to visit my uncle, but it had been a busy, grueling week somehow, and I was exhausted, and my parents came over (I was staying at grandma’s with the kids, getting ready to head back to Santa Barbara in a few days) and he asked me what I wanted to do, and I said “Daddy, it’s so hot, and I’m tired, can we just stay home and relax?” And that’s what we were going to do.  I figured the kids could play in the pool out back, and we could hang out, and I could finally get a chance to show him my travel pictures and recount my adventures in Italy and stuff like that.

And then for some stupid reason, I don’t even know how or why it came up, my mom decided that he should fix Grandma’s swamp cooler and get it running again.  We talked about just living with it for a few more days, or making things easy and just going out and to buy an air conditioner, because it needed parts, and no one even sold swamp cooler parts around here.  But she got it in her head that it needed to be fixed, and started calling different stores and said “if I can find the parts, I’ll go get them, and if not, we’ll buy an air conditioner.”  She struck out over and over again, I was really hoping common sense and fate would win, and then she finally found some hardware store up in Sandy that had the stuff and decided she was going to go up and get whatever it was, so he’d better get to work. 

The stupidest thing about all of it was that Grandma didn’t even want the damn thing fixed, she wanted to make potato salad and play cards, and didn’t want any more time invested into this swamp cooler that had been kicking around since like 1952.  She was prepared to go without, or get something easier to deal with, but no one could win once my mom got determined.  So I sent the kids out to play in the pool, my dad started working on it by himself, because I have fuck-all idea how to fix a swamp cooler and it looked like a one-man job, and the temperature continued to climb…  I told him to be careful and take it easy and drink water, and he took an alarming amount of Advil or Tylenol or something, and drank some water and said he’d be fine.  He even got a bandana soaked in cold water and tied it around his neck, he would be fine...  And this whole time, I was just SO frustrated and so angry about what was happening, I wanted to scream.  It was taking everything I had not to just unleash it all on my mom.  But I felt like it wouldn’t change anything; it would just be more drama, and the swamp cooler was still going to get fixed even with a fight.  So when my mom got back from Sandy, I said I was going to the store, and went off to get a soda and chain-smoke and brood and cry for a while, while I tried to compose myself and get ready to go back in. 

I was gone maybe half an hour.  I came back to find a firetruck outside the house, lights flashing.  My heart dropped and I knew what happened before I even made it to the door.  My dad had collapsed about 15 minutes after I left, the boys saw him and screamed out, my mom tried to do CPR.  If I had been there, I could have done it better, because her mobility issues made it very hard, if I could have done it and not passed out from fear…  But I’m usually pretty good in situations like that, and if I had just been there…  But I wasn’t.  

The paramedics arrived very quickly, but his heart had stopped and he wasn’t breathing, and they didn’t think they could fix it.  They kept working on him, though, for about 3,000 years, or 20 minutes, or somewhere in between.  I called my ex and told him to come over and get the kids RIGHT NOW, because I didn’t know what was going to happen and they needed functioning adults.  They got his heart started again, they got him breathing, but the paramedic told me it had been too long, and that the only thing we could hope for was a miracle.

But we didn’t get one.  He hung on for a few days in the hospital while they tried things to cool him down and get things going again, but it was too late, and I never got to tell him about Italy, and he never got to teach the boys to drive or fix their cars, or see the girl’s drawings, or play magic with Jester, or meet my baby girl, and we aren’t having a birthday party for him today, and my kids don’t have their Poppy, and I don’t have my dad, and it’s my fucking fault.   Not entirely, but it is partly, you can’t convince me that it’s not.  For not fighting the fight with my mom, for not just going to Springfield, for being so stressful, for bugging out and running and being there to perform CPR… And it’s their fault, too, for pushing him so hard, for taking advantage of him, and not caring for him, and bleeding him dry.  And it’s his fault, too, for not speaking up for himself and saying no.  “Not today.  Just buy a damn air conditioner so we can look at pictures and play cards and enjoy the day,” and now there aren’t any more days.

I had some point in mind, some reason I had to write this.  I wrote about parts of it once before, but I was compelled to delete it by lawyers, or my mom, or something way back when.  But I think it's something that is not meant to stay deleted.  And I something I was thinking today about why it’s so important  that people learn to stand up for themselves and speak out for what they want, and that there’s some better way than either submitting to everything, or bailing and hiding out.  And something else about how worried I am about my Uncle, how he’s gotten stuck taking on this same role, and I don’t know how to bust him out before he gets used up, too, because they will use him up, and anyone else who lets them.  I feel like that’s where I intended to go with it, but there was a lot more in there that wanted to come out, and it took over.  I miss my dad so much.  I hate that he’s not here.  I know so many people who had no dads, or shitty dads, or absent dads who have somehow managed to hang around on the edges of people’s existences, just taunting them with the fact of their ongoing disinterested existence, but I had one of the BEST dads in so many ways, and I barely got the part of life where I really got to know him as an adult, and see him be an awesome grandpa, and all of that, and it fucking sucks, almost too much to bear, but I usually manage, just not on this particular day.

I’m done, though, for now.  Whatever lessons are supposed to come out of this, whatever I’m supposed to do with it can’t happen today, because it’s his birthday, and I have to finish up this grieving nonsense, and get my head on straight to go to work.  And, it sounds like, go play some Barbies.  They are going on an epic camping trip in the living room, and I apparently play some integral role in the trip’s success.  Yay, Barbies, someone's got to do it.

Revenge of the First

It has been a few weeks, and I haven’t posted an update on the situation with my mom’s house, mainly because life has been INSANE, but also because I handled things less than ideally, and I am pretty embarrassed by how it all went down.

The plan, dear interlocutors and interested parties, was this: we were going to get the Mustang sold to make the June payment, and then my mom was supposed to work on getting some of her assorted stuff (fenton art glass, sewing machines if need be, etc.) sold to make the July payment.  My sister was going to have a big garage sale, to clear things out, and I kind of thought to help with the mortgage payment.  We had things under control, we had a PLAN.

But, like most plans I try to make, it did not really work out.  Selling the mustang in its previous non-running state was a major challenge, we also had substantial life things to deal with and had a hard time keeping up on it all.  My sister DID have a big garage sale, and I believe she made some money at it, but I don’t think any of it went towards saving the house.  I don’t know.  No one actually tells me things unless/until it’s an emergency they want me to solve.

While this was going on, I discovered something else.  I applied and was accepted to a graduate teacher education program in my area.  I received a generous funding package, comprised of scholarships and a tuition remission fellowship that was going to make the whole thing cost me about $1000.  Not bad, really, since scholarships for teaching school are pretty rare… BUT I discovered 2 weeks before class started that the tuition remission did not start until Fall 2019, and I had no funding at all for summer term.  Also, the additional endorsement program they pushed me to enroll in cost quite a bit more than they said it did at the info night...

“WELL, SHIT,” I thought, “but I’m already committed to this,  and $5,000 still isn’t that bad for an MA,” so I filled out last year’s FAFSA and a financial aid form, and was “awarded” a Stafford loan that was enough to cover both tuition and an excess of, very conveniently, just a bit over the amount needed to cover my mom’s next stupid payment if we couldn’t get the Mustang sold in time. In the meantime, my brother-in-law very graciously offered to come down to visit and stay for a few days and get the car to start and run.  So, I figured, “OK, I’ll accept the loan, hold off a few weeks on selling the car, give my mom a temporary loan until that happens, and then have this little pool of money left over to put a down payment on a new van, since ours is breaking down”  Sure, it’s not what student loans were intended for, by any means, but basically NONE of the student loans I took out for my Ph.D. actually went to tuition (CUSTODY LAWSUITS, living expenses while ex was unemployed, etc., BOOOOO!!!) so I’m already on a roll, at least this makes things simple and I can stop being so anxious about it and do this in an orderly fashion.

So brother-in-law comes down, they mess around with the car for a couple of days, finally get it running, husband posts it for sale right before I head off to leave on what’s supposed to be my last-hurrah-before-becoming-a-worthless-graduate-student-again trip to Seattle for a Magic tournament.  I’m thinking, when I get back, it will be sold and life will be grand.  But shit happened.  So much shit, and it didn’t work out.

Life got super stressful in a number of new and exciting ways, the car got unlisted, grandma’s health took an abrupt turn for the worse. (She got better, though, like she does.) (I don’t mean “better” as in  she’s going to completely shake off this whole dying plan, but she did recover from the apparent crisis, and is back to her basic slow, steady, generally cheerful decline.)  My mom also DID start making inroads into sorting her stuff for some kind of sale, so that’s good.  The Mustang is now in my garage, it has a trip permit, and it’s sitting there taunting me and trying to tempt me to take it out and drive off fleeing into the sunset, as I have a tendency to do when I have access to a convertible in the midst of a mid-life crisis scenario. 

(OK, that’s only happened ONCE so far, so that may not indicate an actual a “tendency,” but the overwhelming pull that stupid car has on me right now makes me suspect that it easily could become one if I let it.  And hey, maybe that’s not so bad.  The last time it happened, it more or less worked out because, while the Rabbit DID sort of burst into flames in the dead of night on a spooky and remote stretch of highway between San Francisco and Santa Barbara, I DID meet a prophet out of the deal (my first and only so far).  And the interesting, painful, but enlightening and completely necessary drama that ensued, eventually, after much agony, did end up being for the best.  I think.  Let’s just say it did.)

Whew, I got off track, because this is where it all went wrong, and I am super stressed about it, and now we get back to the June payment.  I got back from Seattle much later than I expected on the 23^rd.  My grad program started the evening of the 24^th.  I was exhausted, there was a lot to deal with, I just barely got myself to my first class.  But my first class was kind of awesome, and I felt pretty optimistic about that.  I was still really worried about the cohort leader I was assigned to, but I had a meeting scheduled for the next day with the department head, and it was my understanding that I was going to be able to switch groups before the first class met, and everything would be OK.  BUT IT WAS NOT OK.  It was super not OK, but I sent off the emails I needed to, worked on my Monday class homework, did some other stuff that really needed to be done, and just let my mom know that, look, I took out enough student loans to cover the $1500 you need for this month, and you can pay me that back when we get the Mustang relisted and sold, hopefully this weekend. 

“But,” she said, “actually, some things that I wasn’t expecting came up, and could you actually do $2000.”  “Um…” I thought, “that breaks into the van money I got selling Magic cards in Seattle, but we should definitely be able to get $2000 for the car, but maybe not much more, and I was really hoping we would also be reimbursed for some of the miscellaneous money we’ve put into getting it salable and posted…but OMFG, whatever, I don’t have time to get her sorted out to do anything else.”  So I agreed.  (I also found out that she actually only has one more balloon payment to make, not the two that I was expecting, and so the other part of my acquiescence was just relief that we were a lot closer to done with this mess than I thought.)

She gave me a deposit slip, I went to my bank and withdrew the cash, drove it over to her bank and deposited it on Wednesday, and let her know, and ASSUMED she’d let me know when she’d made the payment because she knew I was worried … but all I heard were crickets.  “Well,” I thought again, “grandma’s been struggling, and she’s probably worrying about that.  I’m sure she made the payment.  Of course she did.”  But more crickets.

Meanwhile, I was dealing with an apocalypse at school.  They wouldn’t let me switch cohorts, my guys was 100 times worse than I ever imagined, the department was only marginally helpful in sorting it out.  I was panicking because I went in not 100% sure if I actually wanted to be a high school teacher, and became certain that, either way, there was no way I could make it through a term, let alone 2 years with this guy in charge of my classes, my placements, and my veritable fate.  I was dealing with that, and trying to keep the kids somewhat entertained, as well, and not really thinking that I needed to also micromanage my mom.

But then it was Friday, the 28^th, two days before the first, and I still hadn’t heard from here, and then I got scared.  I sent her a text in the morning – “did you get the payment made?  It’s the 28^th…”  No reply.  I went to the meat market, and started a pot of hamhocks and beans for grandma, because I know it sounds cheesy, but they always cheer her up and have lead to improbably health rallies in the past.  I did some other things, and got ready to take the kids to the park.  I still hadn’t heard and thought everything MUST be OK or she would have said something, and then I realized in one of those lightning-flash oh-shit moments that probably the opposite was true somehow.  So I called her around 2:30.  She didn’t answer.  I left a message.  More crickets, so we went to the park.

The big kids drew and walked around, the little one played and looked at rabbits, and we were treated to a very flashy obnoxious show of squirrels doing it.  It was a pretty good park trip all around, but as we were about to get in the car, the phone rang.  At 3 FUCKING 45 PM, the last bank day before the first.  It was my mom calling me back, guess how: IN A PANIC.  Some auto payment debited early, allegedly, and she was another $350 short.  Could she borrow that much until Tuesday, when she would definitely pay me back.  I’d need to come by and get her debit card or a deposit slip, and take care of it right away.

SO FUCK.  JUST, FUCK.  I was pretty exasperated, but I didn’t chew her out.  I’m already 2 grand in on this, what the fuck does it even matter now.  I told her I’d drop off the kids, and head over, we’re apparently doing this again.  Dashing across Gresham in afternoon traffic, getting the slip, going to my bank, going to her bank, hoping to make it on time, waiting in line to do bank business on the Friday afternoon before a holiday week when everyone who still gets physical paychecks is trying to turn them into spending cash.  FUCK.

I did cry in the car, and told the kids what was happening, and how this wasn’t OK, and I would never, ever, EVER do this to them, and they didn’t need to worry that this was some kind of normal.  (It’s not normal, it’s not OK, and I will NEVER put them through this.)  I stopped at the house and got them settled, and scooped out a couple of containers of beans for grandma, and headed over to the house to get the thing.  I got over there and went inside, and realized my uncle was there, but no Momma.  She was at HER house, by the way, going through stuff and didn’t mention it.  So I jumped back into the car, went over to her house, she handed me the deposit slip and thought it was funny that I was confused?  No sorry, no thank you, just here you go, do the thing.

And I did the thing, and texted her from the bank asking her to please confirm for me when she’d made the payment so I could stop worrying about it.  She at least did that, but was very terse about it, and seemed put out by my distress.  I was rattled, and stressed out, and felt like a complete chump, but I didn’t have time to rage it out.  I went to Magic with my son, I played horrifically because I was so distracted, but that’s still better than sitting home stewing in bile. 

More things happened with school, the situation got worse, I realized I couldn’t do it and needed to drop, but decided to sleep on it a night, and dropped out Monday morning… only to find that I had to drop by midnight Sunday night to get a refund, because summer term is really, really stupid like that.  I filled out a petition to get the refund, anyway, due to the extremely bizarre circumstances I was dealing with.  It should eventually be approved, but there are several more steps to go, and I am not even 100% sure what happens with the student loans once my drop is processed.  Are they all due back right away?  Do I just have this stupid money in my account?  If so, I’m going to see if I can send it right back to them, but there are several layers of “Ifs” that must be resolved before I even get to that point, so I have not put in the call yet.

In any case, now I’m stuck here, with another chunk of student loans taken out, my mom (OBVIOUSLY) did not call me on Tuesday to arrange to pay me back the $350.  My whole life plan is screwed up, and I feel like a total chump.  So far as I can tell, she hasn’t actually started trying to sell anything to make the August payment, and I suspect is planning on me stepping in to organize whatever sale she is envisioning carrying out.  I’ve got a bedeviled Mustang sitting in my garage taunting me, and everything is a gigantic mess.

But I am trying to just keep going.  I relisted the car today, and have already had one pretty serious bite.  I called my boss and said “hey, I actually AM available to teach for you now,” and was immediately assigned more classes for the summer than I probably should have taken on, but I feel an urgent pressure to make some money, just in case this refund thing doesn’t pan out, and because the van’s still busted and is not, like my grandma, a magical, immortal, self-regenerating beast.  And more than that, because when I go to work and teach my silly classes, I feel competent, and in-control of the situation, and fulfilled knowing that I am helping people who actually want and appreciate my help, but the same time able to say “no,” when they occasionally ask for help that exceeds my contracted list of duties and obligations. 

I’m trying to make a new life plan, and figure out what’s next.  I’m reading a self-help book on codependency, because… when someone told me that was the problem with me way back in the Generalisimo days, I thought they just meant “as it pertains to your relationship with Franco,” and did not pick up at the time that they meant “YOUR WHOLE ENTIRE PROBLEM, STUPID, EVERYTHING ABOUT YOU AND THE WAY THAT YOU’VE BEEN TRAINED TO INTERACT WITH PEOPLE.”  It was a tricky time, I was fighting for my life, and the fact that I at least heard part of that message and got out was, I think, still a pretty decent victory, but it probably would have kept me out of some of the additional trouble that followed if they had explained that a little more thoroughly at the time.  It would also be helpful if, instead of just explaining the 1000 ways my brain is dysfunctional, it would take a chapter out to explain how “normal, healthy” people do respond to this kind of nonsense, so I understood what I was aiming for.  But it doesn’t, so I guess I will just have to interpolate and guess.

And that’s where I’m at.  Waiting to hear from the school, waiting to hear from my mom about the $350 (assuming that I won’t),  waiting to hear from potential Mustang-owners, and currently, at this EXACT moment, babysitting a classroom full of students who are enduring the agony of a proctored LSAT exam.  Waiting and thinking and hatching plans, and planning responses, and building up the nerve to tell my mom “NO MORE. That’s it, I’m out, you’re going to have to figure out the rest.” 

I know that’s what I need to say, I’m trying to work up to saying it, but it’s trickier than it sounds.  My poor uncle is imprisoned over there trapped in her net (he’s a grown man, he could also say no, I know that’s at least not my responsibility, but … my brain programming is barely hanging on to this concept in general, and is not ready to stop worrying about him.)  Worse yet, it sounds like, we’ve heard disturbing rumors that, she’s trying to sucker my nephew who just turned 18 into taking his place, and that is TERRIFYING.  FUCKING TERRIFYING.  Like, I know that I need to defend myself, we also have an obligation to protect the kid, because he’s also been raised in this nightmare scenario, he doesn’t understand that it’s not normal, and we want to make sure that he really understands what’s really happening, and knows that he does have the right to say no.

So, anyway, everything’s pretty much fucked at the moment.  But the goddamn house isn’t being foreclosed on for another month.  I’m so tired of all of this, I want out, I want to run away.  But I don’t want to see another unsuspecting victim get sucked in to take my place. 

Anyway, this has all been super fun (I’m apparently less fine and composed about it than I thought I was when I started, arghhh!!!,) but the students are finally ready for their break, so I’m ending this here.

What Dreams May Come …

I had the WORST nightmare this morning, it was nuts.  I dreamed that my mom called me in a panic, late at night asking if I had the cash from selling the mustang yet, because she needed it now.  I said “no, we haven’t sold it yet,” so she told me that she urgently needed me to come over and pick up some kind of special debit card grandma had for her benefits account, and withdraw $1200 to cover something, and it had to be done that night.  And I did, and then had to go on some kind of crazy scavenger hunt, because there are only certain ATM’s the card will work at, and it’s in a dark, creepy strip mall up an inexplicable set of stairs, but I finally find it and get the cash out, and go back over, and ask if I need to go deposit it into her bank account so she can send it to the mortgage company—because that is where this is going, right? And also, isn’t the payment not due until the 31st^? And here is the ATM receipt, do you realize that we just completely drained the account???—and she breaks down and confesses that isn’t what it’s for.  She’s managed to get herself into some kind of trouble with the Russian* mafia, they stopped by the house today, and are coming for the cash in the morning, and they need $1200 “or else.” 

She explained that she accidentally got involved in some kind of online scam, a website that guaranteed they could fill whatever prescriptions a person had for under what the insurance would charge, for her, just $300 a month.  So she filled out some kind of online agreement and sent them a list of all of grandma’s prescriptions, but it turned out they said they couldn’t fill them for less than it was after insurance and never sent anything, and she thought that was the end of it, and she didn’t think it was a big deal or that she would have to cancel or anything, because she hadn’t given them any kind of address information, but somehow they FOUND her…  And then my husband burst through the bedroom door (the door is sticky, so anytime anyone comes through it, it sounds like they are bursting through) and said “hey, it’s 7:40, don’t you have work?” and I’m like “crap, yes, I have tutoring at 8, why didn’t my alarm go off?!?  Oh my gosh, but we need to get that money together for my mom…” and then I realized it had been a dream, and had to say outloud several times "it was only a dream," while I quickly got dressed and got some coffee and went down to do my tutoring session.

And the whole time, my mind is still churning, and making stupid observations like “That makes no sense, grandma is on hospice and they pay for all of her meds, what has she REALLY gotten herself into, was it for her own meds, or my sister’s? Or is it some kind of gambling debt?” and “Oh no! Did I just commit some kind of social security fraud by removing money from grandma’s account without her express consent?  Oh God, now I’m a criminal, too!…” instead of doing the reasonable thing and reminding itself “hey, stupid, it was just a dream, calm down, it’s not real.  We don’t have to worry about the mafia, just the mortgage company, the utility people, creditors, and the IRS…”  My brain couldn’t let it go because it was SO freaking plausible, and exactly the kind of thing that could happen, it just hasn’t yet.

So, here is what actually HAS been happening, since a few people have asked.  

Here it is: ….........   nothing, or nothing much. 

I mean, nothing is relative.  For instance, a couple of weeks ago, at 2pm on a Friday, my mom called me in a panic (her normal way of calling me, for the record) and said that her mortgage payment was due that day, and she needed me to come over to the house in Troutdale, pick up $35 cash from her, and drive it back to Gresham to deposit into her bank account.  The bank closes at 5pm, the payment has to clear by 6pm.  Can I do it? Because she was counting on my sister to do it, but she couldn’t get in touch with her (and had made no advance arrangements for this to happen.)  I was like “ACK, yes, I can, but I am out running an errand and have to get back home for an online tutoring appointment, and can’t leave until that’s over, but I will race over as soon as it’s done."  

The appointment finished at 4.  I got over there at 4:20 because traffic in Gresham is stupid in the afternoon.  Right before I got there, she sent me another text, “also, can I borrow between $5 and $20, I can pay you back on Monday.”  I walk in the door to get the cash and the deposit slip, I ask if it’s actually 5 or 20, and she says 20.  I’m like, “OK, well, I have zero cash on me because the kids cleaned me out for a field trip, so I’ll have to stop really quick at the store and get some, and then I’ll go to the bank.”  Back to the traffic, the store, the bank on Friday afternoon….  I get the money deposited at like 4:45, just in the nick of time, and call her to let her know.  She gets the payment made, by the skin of her teeth.  Monday comes and goes, I’m obviously never getting paid back the $20, I’m just glad the house is safe for one more month, but …

WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK.  How did this all come down to the last second?  Just . . . HOW?  She either had the money or didn’t and had to scrape it up somehow, was it really some kind of last minute thing?  The 31st isn’t some kind of catlike phantom that silently sneaks up on you, moving imperceptibly and unpredictably through the grass, until SUDDENLY, IT IS UPON YOU.  “OH MY GOD, NO, IT’S THE THIRTY-FIRST, I NEVER SAW THIS COMING, AHHHHHHHHH!!!!”  (Just like taxes, though, right?) And why couldn’t she have at least let me know the night before, or that morning, instead of that afternoon with just a few hours left to go, so it had to turn into some kind of action movie, countdown, bad guys coming, gotta make the drop on time or else something blows up situation?  HOW?!?!?  But this kind of thing happens all the time.

And for this reason, and because of other things that I have learned about, or have had reason to become suspicious about but don’t want to commit to writing at this time, because if they are true…yeesh, it’s bigtime illegal stuff, and if they aren’t true, I’m spreading baseless rumors (but I’m 99.9% sure that they are, unfortunately.)  In any case, the point is, the nightmare about the Russian mafia shakedown felt so incredibly plausible and in-line with everything else that has happened so far that now, hours and multiple distracting activities later, my brain can’t quite let go of it, and it still FEELS real, even though it’s not.

As far as what else is happening, as far as I know… no one is going to relent and sell New Car or $$$ Sewing Machine.  Those options aren’t even being considered.  My sister had some kind of giant “moving sale” and sold off God knows what (husband went over to help, and said I was NOT allowed to go over because it would upset me.)  Whatever money she made off of it was NOT given to mom to help make the mortgage payments.  I think some of it went to buying my nephew an expensive birthday present, as were the proceeds from the Magic cards he sold off in a big giant panic like his housing is on the line, and they are keeping the rest for when they get evicted, as far as I can tell.  (But probably, it just got spent on miscellaneous whatever, and/or entertaining my niece’s Fortnite boyfriend who actually flew up from Arizona to visit her.  WHO KNOWS?!?)  

In other news, my nephew turned 18, and is finishing up with school, sort of, but is adamantly telling anyone who asks him about it that no, he's not looking for a job, he doesn't need to get a job because he's enrolling in community college in the fall... Oldest niece, still no job, no ambition to get one.  No one is doing any kind of online employment that anyone can do, even though the pay is crappy, it is some pay.  And so on.  All of this is just crazy-making, because we are just $4500 away from no one being evicted at all, and say, $1000 from selling off a bunch of magic cards and running a garage sale would have put us a lot closer to that next payment, and then the next one, but no one is thinking like that.

It appears to be every man for himself right now, and not even that, because they aren’t even bothering to swim for it, or anything, and the shore . . . it’s like RIGHT OVER THERE, RIGHT NEXT TO THE THIRTY-FIRST, but they’re floundering around, yelling "help, help," and making a superficial attempt at treading water, and that’s about it.

In better news, my brother-in-law came down from Redmond and got the Mustang to start, so we should have an easier time selling it now.  Hopefully, because my first attempt to sell it was hella stressful and fruitless.  I could’ve traded it to this guy for a pretty sweet motorcycle, no problem.  Or sold it to some kind of ocean researcher stationed on a ship who is looking to buy it as a surprise gift for her father, but the whole transaction has to be conducted via email and Paypal, hmm….  (And then I got three more emails almost exactly like that but with slightly different details—come on scammers, at least be more creative.) And then I got a bunch of phone calls from people asking questions I didn’t know the answers to about the car, and once people in a car-buying situation perceive your ignorance, they get really uppity and try to take you for a ride, and it’s insulting, and frustrating, and anxiety-provoking, and so on. 

It’s hard enough to sell a car when you at least know you get the money, and to be rid of a car that is cluttering up your life.  But I’m getting nothing out of this, and the car’s not actually in my space where I have to deal with it.  I have, in fact, spent the last few years ACTIVELY trying to ignore that stupid car, and to know and think as little about it as possible, due to the absolutely irresponsible, fucked-up circumstances in which it was bought… (bought by my niece who didn’t drive at the time, still doesn’t, with money she should have been saving to live on, with the unfounded expectation that someone was going to help her fix it up, from my con artist, drug-addled sister-in-law, against fervent recommendations from everyone who knew better… Do you KNOW how relieved I was when I finally realized I had never checked to make sure it wasn’t stolen, and found that it was not, or at least not reported as such…)  So, yeah, it’s kind of stressful, but that next payment is coming due, so we’re getting it done, now or never, do or die…

Or maybe, I’m saying to hell with it, and GETTING MYSELF A FUCKING MOTORCYCLE.  

Because that would be sweet, and I don’t really think what we’re doing is going to fix the long-term situation, anyway.  All of this just feels like band-aids and duck tape, and I would look awesome on a motorcycle.  (And I would almost certainly crash it and die two weeks later, but at least I would no longer be worrying about this, so that still might count as a win...)

---

*And why the Russian mafia, specifically?  Just because the only mafia guys I personally know/know of/do unrelated-to-mafia-legitimate-business-with in the area are Russian, or maybe Ukranian, I don't know.  Former Soviet Union, somewhere, I feel like it would be rude to ask for specifics.

In the Vampire’s Lair (don't help, you can't help, no one can help them but them)

I am done trying to be diplomatic.  This situation is insane, and I can’t deal with it anymore.

I went over on Friday to help my mom out with some stuff, or to try and help.  She spends all of her time playing games on her tablet, eating cake (literally, she was eating cake, and then asked me to bake another cake while I was there,) and when I left, she and my uncle were planning to spend the rest of the day doing a Jurassic Park marathon.  

Her response to Rome burning is to do NOTHING AT ALL to try and help herself.  There is so much she could be doing from the comfort of her power recliner, things she could be researching or listing stuff for sale, and there are online work-at-home jobs I told her about that she could be doing to make some extra money.  She does nothing.  I get that she’s depressed, but who the fuck isn’t right now?  At some point, you have to pitch in.

I got burned out, mainly by the Jurassic Park thing for some reason—why don’t you kick back and Netflix and chill today, Marie Antoinette, while my husband is outside in the fucking pouring down rain trying to get Grandma’s car started so we can move it, and I’m banging my head against the wall trying to get you to focus on anything useful, but really, you deserve that break from all of this nasty, hard real life—and I decided to try and take a break from it for a few days, but it didn’t work.

We never get a break from this.  We’ve been doing research all weekend to try and figure out how much to sell the cars for, do we really need to get the replacement titles, etc. and all kinds of other things, and just thinking about this and talking about it all the time, but I needed a break from talking to her.  There are phone calls to be made, and phone calls to be answered, and my phone got bombed all day with texts from my sister and nephew about various things. The garage sale they were trying to run, the magic cards he’s trying to sell, it just never stops.

Then my mom calls me yesterday afternoon in tears.  She isn’t going to be able to make her May payment after all.  She is short at least $500, she won’t tell me exactly how much, or what happened, just a vague statement about “other things came up.”  “Other things like what?”  She had to pay her past due power bill to keep the electricity from getting shut off, for one, (which she hilariously believes is completely unreasonable and unfair,) but I’m sure it’s more than that. 

The payment is due Friday, she called me on Tuesday.  There is no fucking way it was a surprise and she just figured it out then, but she cries first, and then is passive-aggressive when I’m shocked and upset to hear it, and switches over into “I shouldn’t have even called…” to try and make me feel bad, and she has no ideas whatsoever about what she can do about it.  If she doesn’t get it paid, she immediately gets knocked out the program with her mortgage company and goes back to instant foreclosure, I guess?  She was supposed to call them first thing this morning and find out, but I haven’t heard back yet, and the place has been open since 8am EST, so…

Apparently, her assurances that if we get the current situation stabilized, she does have enough money to keep the two households afloat just aren’t true.  I asked her months ago to make me a spreadsheet of all of her bills so we could really take a look at it and figure things out. She said she did, she said she would be fine, but she’s not going to be fine.  One of the houses HAS TO GO, and that either means moving my sister over to grandma’s house, or moving my mom and grandma back to mom’s house, and she just refuses to face that.  Her plan to avoid that was apparently to just not pay the utility bills while she was making the extra mortgage payments. That’s all I can figure.  The numbers don't add up otherwise.

A bunch more things came up after that, and yesterday when I finally got in touch with my sister, well, here are some of the exasperating highlights.  My mom has been paying full coverage car insurance on her SUV that broke down and hasn’t been drivable since last July.  She also pays insurance on grandma’s car, which has been mechanically disabled and parked for like 6 years.  (Because grandma lost her license, but kept going off and trying to drive.)  So that’s crazy-making, I bet that's at least $500 in the last 3 months right there.  But there’s lots more, more important stuff, that’s just the kind of everyday stupid shit that helps explain how a person can burn through as much money as she has in such a short amount of time.

Here’s the big stuff: My mom owns a professional-grade sewing machine she bought about a year and a half ago for around $8000.  She could, it turns out, sell that quickly for at least $4000, but refuses to even think about that possibility, or tell me that it was an option.  I did kind of new about this expensive sewing machine of legend, and asked her a couple of times  She told me she called around about selling it and got some much lower numbers, but it turns out she was talking about her older sewing machine that she IS willing to part with, and pretending like the other one didn’t exist. 

Moreover, my sister drives around in nearly brand-new car that my mom paid off completely for her in July (at the same point she stopped making her mortgage payments; the two are related but it’s a book in and of itself.  Just so much of this is about a crazy tantrum fight/power struggle my mom and sister have been having with each other forever.)  Carmax will give my sister $11,000 for it on the spot (she recently checked,) more than enough money to catch up on the mortgage AND buy a reliable used car to get to her doctor’s appointments, but she won’t even consider doing that and has a big hysterical breakdown every time it comes up, but she will run around telling everyone who will listen how she’s about to be homeless, is going to die in her car, how none of her kids have food and stuff, and, but, she's driving around in this goddamn car, and I just can’t… NONE OF THIS HAS TO BE THIS WAY. 

There is so much more--I wrote it out, but then deleted it--because it gets into the secrets and lies and illegal activity department, where I KNOW stuff is up, but I never know exactly what, because every time I ask to see actual numbers or bank statements or documents, it becomes the conversation equivalent of a room full of cockroaches scurrying for cover when you turn the kitchen light on. There are lies and fraud and manipulation happening basically all time right now, and I basically can't take anything that my mom says to me at face value.  That's as much detail as I'll write here, I guess.  But the point is, there have been numerous other ways that they could have helped themselves and didn't, and did stupid, stupid, reckless stuff with money instead, just in the last several months.  Plus the sewing machine, and the car, and the dinosaurs, and the cake...

Just all of that, and so much more, is why I REFUSE to open a gofundme account for them, or anything like that.  They don't need charity.  They don't need bailed out.  If they want to do that for themselves, there is nothing stopping them, but I'm not participating.  They HAVE the assets in the sewing machine and the car, and the turning off extraneous services, and the power to help themselves.  They could do it quickly and neatly and get the current mess stabilized, and then work on creating a more feasible long-term plan.  I know they might need help executing the transactions and finding a new car quickly and that kind of stuff, and I’d be more than willing to help with that…

But they won’t do it.  They won’t help themselves.  They, my mom in particular, are fine with us running around killing ourselves, worrying, spending all of our waking hours trying to figure out how we can possibly help, putting in time, manual labor, making phone calls, running errands, etc., all with no thanks, (which I never actually expect from my mom, but still, it makes it even harder).  She just straight-up EXPECTS me to bail her out.  She expects me to fix it all, and to do it in a way that won’t deprive her of anything she actually cares about, and I’m done.

Back in February, after my earliest attempts to help made me feel like there was more to what she was saying, but I wasn’t sure what, I tried to be very stern with her.  I told her that if I was going to help her, I needed a bunch of documentation from her, I needed her to do XYZ steps on her own, and I needed her to be honest with me, or I was just done and they were all on their own.  I put it all in writing, I sent her a checklist.  She didn’t do any of the things, she continues to be dishonest with me, maybe because she is dishonest with herself, and I feel like I need to just say no, I’m out, but I’m so scared of what happens to everyone if I do that.

But I’m also scared of what happens if I don’t.  This is already killing my ability to do my job, and the stress of it almost made me miss deadlines to get back into school.  It’s stressing me out more than anything has ever stressed me out in my life, and if you know anything about my life, that’s saying something.  On top of that, the addiction and gambling and compulsive shopping things that are plaguing them don’t magically go away even if I did find a genie, and shake him down for the money.  

And I was thinking about it a few weeks ago: How much money would it actually take to completely fix this and make it all OK?  $50k to fix the mortgage and pay off the fines and fees.  $80k (approx., she won’t tell me the whole amount) to fix the tax debt, plus interest and penalties on that.  And then something like $2000 a month forever to make up the shortage between what they spend and what comes in.   But even that wouldn’t be ENOUGH.  No amount of money will ever be enough, because they are capable of spending literally infinite amounts of money, without even thinking about it, on garbage and nonsense and restaurant food, and phone games, and QVC, and medications, and so on, and so on.  (I know I lumped in an essential with the nonessentials, but that is literally the order that my mom prioritizes things in, so why not?)

They are vampires, my mom in particular, but she has created a whole brood of vampire minions, and I can’t fix that.  And I don’t want to try anymore.   I just don’t.  I don’t want to help them sell their stuff, I don’t want to help them pack and haul things to the dump (and pay the dump fees myself) or get her a tax lawyer (that I have to pay for) or anything else, I don’t want to spend more mental energy making a Plan and Doing Research and Trying to Help while they are doing nothing, and continuing to lie, and so on. 

I almost certainly still will end up doing it in the long run, because I’ve been so thoroughly conditioned to play this game that the thought of not doing it almost exactly AS distressing than the thought of doing it—it’s like a teeter-totter of guilt/anger/obligation/exhaustion that keeps rocking back and forth and ripping my brain to shreds every day—but I don’t want to, and I shouldn’t have to, and if I don’t…

If/when this all goes to hell and they do end up on the streets, or in some kind of state-run care facility or whatever, this is 100% on them.  They have the power right now—TODAY—to stop this crisis, and they know it.  All they have to do is follow through.

UPDATE: OMFG.  I just got a text from my mom, and when confronted with selling her sewing machine as the only way out, she suddenly found more money that she could withdraw from her account to pay this month's bill, but she still wants me to figure out how she's going to make the June payment with selling the little stuff off, etc.  Do I even believe any that? I have no idea.  Just fuck it all.

Death and Taxes (HELP!!)

Preface:

I wrote this on Monday, and I was going to be brave and just share it.  But then I panicked and couldn't.  I decided to first ask my mom for permission to share what was going on and reach out to others, and she responded in a panicky way that I took that as a solid no, so I sat on it and stewed for a bit, and then I came up with a plan that I thought would actually work.  I told my mom the plan, and I thought we'd be OK, because it only required the most minimal involvement and cooperation from all of them.  But no one will follow through, no one will cooperate, they won't even talk to each other, and it's not going to work, so this is back to where we're at.  I can't figure out a way to do this on my own.  I can't figure out how to get people organized and get this done, and I need help or ideas, or a dragon... or something.  So, without further ado.

The Original post:

I am dusting off my poor abandoned blog, and writing this because my family is in serious trouble, and it’s more than we can fix on our own.  We’ve been trying for months, we’ve explored every avenue we can think of, but it’s not enough and the situation is desperate.  I know that by writing this, I am betraying my mother’s confidence and violating her express wish to keep this private, to keep it in the family, to not let others know that she’s struggling and needs help.  But she is not the only one who is suffering and imperiled.  My sister is in trouble, the kids are in trouble, and they are being put in a situation that is far beyond what any kid should have to deal with.  So for their sake, I am breaking the rules.*  (I am actually terrified to post this, just white-knuckle, hands-shaking terrified. Such is the power of Family Guilt…)

The immediate crisis:

My mother is behind on her mortgage and is in danger of losing her house.  The foreclosure process is well underway.  She was able to negotiate a payment plan to get caught up over a 6-month period, and made some kind of balloon payment and the first 3 payments, but she can’t afford to make the final 3 back payments that she owes.  She is retired and cannot go back to work; she has no money left in savings or retirement funds; she also owes the IRS a substantial sum in back taxes.  We need to come up with about $4500 to pay that up by the end of the summer ($1500 per month for 3 more months, the first of these payments is due the end of June), and another $1000 or so (my rough estimate, it will probably more) to get a lawyer to help her negotiate with the IRS, and prevent them from also going after the house, as it’s her only asset, or garnishing her social security, as it's her only income.

She doesn’t want to ask for help from anyone outside the immediate family.  She doesn’t even want people within what I would consider the immediate family, people she talks to on a weekly basis, to know.  To be honest, I fear she wouldn’t have even told ME what was happening until it was too late, but my sister finally broke down sobbing and explained it all to me on New Years’ Eve, way too late to stop the worst of it, but at least a few months before the bank showed up to actually seize the house.

My mom has always been a hard-worker, stubborn as an ox, caring in her own coarse, roughly-worded way, proud beyond measure, and very (too) generous and cavalier with her money.  She made really good money as a Civil Engineer, but has also always been fantastically terrible at managing her finances, at knowing what she’s got and what she can afford, at remembering to pay bills, and above all, at saying “no.”  (I honestly don’t think the phrase “I can’t” is in her vocabulary, and if someone breaks down and cries at her, she just blindly writes a check without even looking to see if she’s got money to cover it.) 

She worked her ass off her whole life so she would always have enough money to take care of the people she feels responsible for, but our family has incurred more needs than anyone could have ever anticipated, and she has made some very rash decisions trying to fix things in ways that were unsustainable and disastrous.   She has been utterly lost since my dad died 8 years ago, and just did the only thing she knew how to do; she put her head down and kept working and doing the best that she could, but she is heartbroken and depressed, has no thought to care for herself, has nothing but need and misery surrounding her, and as far as I can see, no feeling of hope or ambition for anything more than this, or any desire to do anything but to keep grandma happy, and a roof over people’s heads.  This situation is all so sad I can barely breathe a lot of the time.  But there is no time for being sad right now, because there are problems that need to be solved.

I am going to sketch out a rough overview of what all is going on around this mess below, as diplomatically as possible, to give some context to the present situation, and then I will explain what kind of help we need.  Because we need help.  I need help.  I’ve exhausted every resource that I have at my disposal, and that I can think of.  I can’t walk away and let this all go up in flames, because there are too many vulnerable people in peril (ironically, they have largely imperiled each other,) and I can’t figure out a solution on my own.

Grandma:

My grandmother, “Grandma Nick” to me, Ruth, to most, became very ill last January.  She has congenital heart failure and dementia.  When she went into the hospital, she was dehydrated, suffering from a kidney infection, and so far gone physically and mentally that she was barely conscious, and when she was, she was completely “unstuck in time,” constantly jumping back and forth from the present, all the way back to her childhood.  Based on the condition of her heart and her kidneys, and some internal bleeding she was suffering from, the doctors said that she was dying and there was no hope, she had days to live, possibly months at the outside, but definitely no more than 6 months. 

Grandma worked for a time as a CNA in nursing homes, back in The Dalles in the 80’s.  What she saw there broke her heart, and she made her kids promise her that NO MATTER WHAT, she wouldn’t be put in a home, that she would be allowed to die in her own house, under her own recognizance, even if that meant dying alone in misery.  We tried several times to get her to move in with us leading up to this, but were always overruled because, I have now realized, my mom and my uncle are terrified of my grandma.  Even in her fragile state, they are SCARED TO DEATH of her of her judgement and disapproval.  To me, she’s just grandma, and I got the grandkids’ allotment of kindness, compassion, and patience that her own kids didn’t get, but to every one else, she is something else.

I love my grandma a lot, but I can also clearly recognize that grandma can be/is/was a mean old manipulative bitch, able to wield guilt and shame like a renaissance master.  (She does this because she knows what’s right for you, even if you don’t know or can’t see it, or heaven forbid, don’t agree.  The road to this Hell we are all in is paved in an intricate mosaic of conflicting and misguided good intentions.)  Grandma married my grandpa when she was 15 and he was shipping off to war.  She worked in the shipyards in WWIII, was the real Rosie the Riveter, an OG badass who went on to spend 50 years battling it out with my Grandpa, the Most Stubborn Man Alive, surviving myriad health problems and heartaches, and fighting through it all, and no one, definitely not her kids, is going to make her do one goddamn thing she doesn’t want to do.  (Except me, I can talk her into almost anything, but only when the gatekeepers will let me...)

When the doctors said she had to be discharged, I argued strongly that she be put in a care facility, even though that’s not what grandma wanted.  We just didn’t have the man power to provide the level of care that she needed.  My mom barely walks, my sister is extremely ill, I have 4 kids of my own, and a job, and a household to try and keep track of.  There just wasn’t anyone capable of providing 24-7 skilled nursing care at home, but there was a decent facility just a few blocks from my house that we could all get over to daily to keep her company . . . but I was categorically overruled (reasons were given, but I still don't know and probably will never know if any of them were actually true...), and she  was discharged on hospice to die at home.

My mom decided to move into grandma’s house with her, to supervise and assist with her care, and to hire caregivers to come in and do whatever we couldn’t.  This was perceived as a short-term solution to a short-term need, and it was profoundly expensive because initially it was 24-7 care.  It also didn’t work very well at first, because grandma doesn’t like caregivers and couldn’t remember who they were half the time, but even when she couldn’t find the strength to do anything else, she still had the strength, apparently, to battle.  My cousin was driving up and spending all of her days off helping, (she still does this a lot,) I went over as many days as I could, prepared meals to bring over, other cousins also came over and helped as much as they could, which was all really, really helpful, but it was still too much, and we were struggling.  After a few months of this, my uncle retired from his job in Eugene and moved up to also stay with them and help out.  And then things changed dramatically.

The important role that isolation and depression plays in the declining health of the elderly cannot be overstated.  Grandma, suddenly having her fondest wish come true of having both her kids back home with her, spending all day every day with her, decided to pull off one of the greatest rallies of all time.   She had been in bed, unconscious for 20+ hours a day, unable to lift her own spoon or get to the bathroom on her own and thus catheterized, hallucinating and talking to dead people; she was basically hopeless and just waiting for her heart to give out in the night.  But after a few days of Uncle Mike and Momma being there together, she scared everyone to death one morning by waking up on her own, and walking out to the refrigerator at 6 am to get herself a glass of milk.  After that initial shock, she continued to improve over for a time, and for a while was up and walking around quite a bit, getting snacks, playing cards again, going on drives, etc.  The doctors made it clear that she wasn’t cured, and still was in this “she could go any time” state, but she sure as hell isn’t planning on going anytime soon.  

Her recovery didn’t last forever, and while she is very, very far from the state she was in at first, she is on a slow, steady decline again, and is sleeping much of the day, and kind of winding down like a clock with a dying battery.  Well, exactly like a clock with a dying battery.  My mom’s car broke down, and they can no longer go on drives.  Grandma is feeling bored and frustrated that she is not getting better, and is giving up.  But not entirely, not immediately.  I have a feeling that if we could do some things to perk up her situation again, and get her out of the house here and there, she might rally once again, but we’re all in disaster mode right now, and no one can manage it.

In addition to the money my mom spent on caregivers, Momma also had to make a bunch of very expensive emergency repairs to the house, and a lot of other related things.  It made sense to her to do this at the time, at least this is how she reasoned it, because grandma has a lot of equity in her house, my mom and uncle are the sole heirs, and they agreed that after grandma died the house would be sold, and my mom would be reimbursed for the money she spent on grandma’s care and home repairs before anything else was done.  It was only a temporary hardship, it was to make grandma happy, and so, they reasoned, it was worth it.  

However, in the meantime, Momma has also continued to support my sister, my 2 nieces and my nephew, who are still living in her house (Momma’s house in Troutdale), paying for their utilities, car insurance and payments, helping them out with money for food, and above all medicine.  Because on top of all of this, my sister has been desperately ill this whole time, and in need of very extensive and expensive medical care, and that is the other half of this equation.

My Sister and Family:

This situation is a lot more complicated, and much harder and sadder to explain.  People get old, they get sick, they need care, they eventually die.  That is sad, but it’s the natural and expected trajectory of life.  This is different. 

My sister has been suffering from serious health problems for decades, as well as mental health concerns and some chemical dependency issues that arose after having to undergo a series of extremely painful surgeries, and then struggling in vain to find a diagnosis for a mysterious, underlying health condition that was plaguing her.  She went to the doctor a hundred times (many hundreds of times, thousands, at this point) because something was wrong with her body, but they couldn’t tell her what it was.  They’d run some tests, and give her some pain pills, and send her home with no answers, and then eventually just wrote her off as a pill junkie and stopped even trying to find answers.  Problems ensued…

And through it all, something WAS wrong with her body, or maybe enough time went on that something eventually became wrong with her body.  There’s no way to know for sure, except that she is very, very sick, now.  They didn’t figure out what until she finally presented with some new bizarre and distinctive symptoms that prompted a dermatologist, of all things, to finally take the matter seriously and start asking the right questions and running the right tests.  (My sister has Oregon health plan, which is better than having no insurance, I guess, but it turns you a parasitic nuisance in the eyes of most doctors, and makes getting long-term, serious care almost impossible.) 

A little more than a year ago, she was diagnosed with chronic sarcoidosis, an inflammatory disease that you can read about at your leisure, should you care to, but it’s not pleasant.  In some cases, it’s pretty mild; it only affects one part of the body, it flares up, it goes away.  In my sister’s case, though, it’s affecting her whole body: her skin, joints, lungs, heart, and liver all appear to be involved.  She has irregular heartbeats, trouble breathing, random terrible (I mean catastrophic) joint swelling, all of it.  It is possible that at some point, they will find a treatment protocol that will ease some of that, and best-case scenario, put it into remission.  But it hasn’t happened yet, and her doctors have apparently categorized her condition as terminal, meaning that someday, either the sarcoidosis, itself, or a side effect like a random bout of pneumonia or heart irregularity, will eventually cause her to die.

When she was first diagnosed, she was prescribed massive amounts of prednisone, which helps some, but not enough, and prednisone causes its own barrage of terrible side effects.  They recommended a bunch of additional medications, some of which cost hundreds and even thousands of dollars per fill, and she’s been going without most of those due to the cost.  She finally got a doctor that is working with the drug companies to try and get her the medicine for no or reduced cost, and she recently started an immune-suppressant that will hopefully reduce her need for prednisone, but it’s only been a few days, and that’s making her sick, too, and it’s scary because that increases her risk of infection so much...  It's all just terrifying.

Most days, she is too tired and ill to do anything but get dressed and attend doctor appointments.  She sleeps most of the time, and says she is surprised every morning to see that she has actually woken up alive.  She is miserable, frightened, and physically destroyed, and in emotional and physical anguish beyond the telling of it.  She is embarrassed about how much weight she has gained from the prednisone, and has a hard time going out even when she feels up to it.  She can’t work, will most likely never be able to work again, and is trying to get on disability.  But the average time to process a disability claim is something like 2 years in Oregon, and getting doctors to stay on top of the paperwork and write the requisite forms is hard enough when you are more-or-less functioning, and nearly impossible when you are not. 

The Family Dynamic

My sister and my mom, when they talk, mostly fight, because that is what they do, it is what they have always done.  They have both been resentfully dependent on one another for a very, very long time.  They don’t know how to talk to each other with any of the empathy or compassion that they are able to summon for other people.  There have been power struggles and frustration and manipulation, and enough tears to fill the sea.  Everyone is angry that no one is doing anything, but neither one of them can see that they are ALL incapacitated in one form or another, and are doing as much as they can.  It’s not enough, but it’s not for sheer lack of effort or desire.  They just can’t, and currently, they aren't speaking at all, even when the only thing we need to be able to help them, is for them to communicate and get on the same page.

My nieces and nephew are doing their best to take care of my sister and to take care of themselves.  They want to stay near their mom, and help her, provide her comfort, and keep her from worrying.  They are 21, 17, and 15 right now.  The oldest is struggling with her own issues, is not working and due to mental health issues, may frankly not be emotionally capable of working as things are.   She is also planning to have a major surgery in the next few months; I have no idea how that is going to work, and I fear that it’s a bad idea, but she is adamant.  I am exercising diplomacy here and not saying any more about it.

The youngest two are in free-fall, struggling to stay in school, not knowing what to do or how to help.   They keep the household running, prepare meals for themselves, do the laundry, take the trash out, try to keep things (kind of) tidy.  They could of course live with us, they will never be homeless and we would be happy to have them, and to be able to help THEM and let them be kids, but we don’t have room for everyone  even in our giant, weird house  (my sister and her oldest would have to stay with my mom at Grandma Nick’s house, so they also have a theoretical place to go, but it would put everyone in very tight quarters,) and the kids don’t want to leave their mom in such distress.

The kids right now are panicking because all they know for sure is that their mom is desperately ill and they are in danger of losing their home.  We don’t know if there is any way we can save it, which leaves them and their mom, and by extension them, without a place to live (again, this how they perceive it, because they can’t even THINK about leaving their mom under these conditions; we’ve talked to them about it, and it’s just not something their brains can hold). 

We thought, a few months ago, before we knew about the taxes, that we had something figured out that would work, that we could take out a personal loan to keep them afloat temporarily, and help my mom get her house refinanced, but then the problem was revealed to be exponentially bigger than we knew, refinancing is off the table, my mom is having a hard time following through on the bare minimum paperwork things that SHE and only she can do, and so we had to tell them “now we don’t know.”  Apparently having some hope and having that hope taken away was worse for my sister, at least, than not having any hope to begin with, so although we are still working very hard to find solutions, I am afraid to say so until anything is certain.

The kids are doing what they can, more than kids should ever have to do, and are trying their best to go through the mountains of stuff at the house looking for things they can sell.  They want to have a garage sale, to make some extra money to maybe help with the mortgage, or maybe set aside in case they do end up needing to find a new place to live with their mom, and to try and reduce the volume of stuff in the house that needs dealt with at some point, one way or another.  I honestly believe there is enough stuff in the way of sewing machines, fabric, records, collectible glass, etc. that we could sell enough to cover my mom’s back mortgage payments.  We all think that, and the kids are over there right now trying to figure it out.

But they’re kids, they’re scared, and they don’t know what to do, or how to do it, and the volume of STUFF in that house is so overwhelming.  (There is a subtheme in the family of hoarding: hoarding books, video games, movies, sewing machines, fabric, art glass, tools, etc. Everyone, my dad included, chose a genre or two of things to hoard, and just really went all-in on it.)  I am overwhelmed by it, and I don’t even live in it.  I get ambitious, and I go over there to look around and try to figure out where to start, what there is (there are, for example FOUR different sets of snow tires, only one of which is for a car that anyone still owns,) what we’re authorized to get rid of, what is easy to get rid of, and about 15 minutes in, my chest starts to tighten up, and I feel like I can’t breathe, because of the enormity of the situation, because I don’t know what’s what, because people chime in and say they were hoping to save X, Y, and Z, because of the tragedy of my sister’s condition, because my mom thinks everything is worth more than we could sell it for, because of the state of the house that my daddy put so much work into, because of the memories good and bad that I have in that place, at the thought of liquidating all of my daddy’s stuff, of losing the house that’s the last testament to him, of my mom possibly ending up with NOWHERE to live, if she’s not careful, and the room starts to go black, and I have to leave to keep from screaming or crying or passing out, because the last thing anyone needs is another person breaking down right now, and I’m no good to anyone like that. 

But nothing is getting done that needs to get done.  It just feels so futile, sometimes: can we really sell of a couple of small things here and a couple of small things there, and have any hope of saving the house?  There are so many small things that it seems like it should be doable, and a few larger things that would make a much bigger dent, and make it even easier: some broken down cars with intact bodies that could at least be sold for parts, a couple of very expensive sewing machines if we could only find a buyer, some really fancy power tools still new and in the box, enough fabric to costume an entire Broadway production.  Logically, it seems doable, but just, how, how, how can we ever hope to get it done with my husband and I being the only intact, semi-functioning grown-ups, and a bunch of teenager assistants, several of who are in severe emotional distress, all of whom need to be working on school for at least another few weeks?

THE CALL FOR HELP:

The thing that pushed me over into breaking my silence, breaking “the rules,” and speaking up about this is that my nephew is, right now, as we speak, going through and getting ready to sell off ALL of his Magic cards to help.  And I mean, staying up all night frantically scanning cards, trying to figure out what he has and how to sell it, every single card except his best commander deck that we won’t let him sell. 

And that is the nice thing about having a collectible hobby; when times get tough, you can sell your toys to pay the bills.  But HE’S A FREAKING KID, and he’s doing this in a panicked, frantic state, literally doing the only thing he can think of to try to help save his mom and save his home, and it shouldn’t have to be like this.  This is not OK, and we, the grownups, have to do better.

I honestly didn’t even realize how much I was still trying to play this broken game, according to this ridiculous, toxic set of rules, until I saw how stressed he was, and realized that of all of the things I have tried, I never once asked anyone else for help, or even advice, because I wasn’t supposed to for reasons both unspoken and explicit, and for some reason, it turns out, I’m apparently also terrified of my mom’s anger and disapproval to the point of dysfunction and self-destruction.  GO FUCKING FIGURE.  (Oh, God, ow.  I literally didn’t realize that was what was going on until just this moment.  I really hope I’m not doing this to my own kids…)

So, ANYWAY, sorry for the distraction. The important question, here, is there any way you can help?

UNREASONABLE FANTASY REQUEST:

I don’t expect, and I’m not really asking for, someone to swoop in and bail my mom out with a loan.  I mean, if you can, and you’re willing, that would be amazing and I would make her accept it, even though it would hurt her pride (there is so much more on the line than pride here, which is why I’m even mentioning it,) and there is no way I could guarantee you’d be repaid until my grandma passes away and her house gets sold and her estate is resolved, which could be months, but knowing grandma, could be years, could be never.  If anyone was unexpectedly immortal, it would be her.  I would also help ensure that you had a proper promissory note, and that the money got directly to the bank where it needs to go, and didn’t get diverted to any one of the short-term minor emergencies that will certainly arise in the next hours/weeks/days, as they continually do.  (For various reasons that I am diplomatically not explaining, none of these people can handle the responsibility of cash.) I absolutely do NOT expect that to happen, but times are tough, and I’m not above throwing it out there as a possibility.

REALISTIC, ACTUAL REQUEST:

What I really need, though, and am hoping that there are people out there who could possibly help with this, is going through The Stuff and liquidating things to come up with the funds my mom needs to get caught up on the mortgage and start dealing with the IRS.  Grandma Nick wants a bunch of her extra furniture and stuff sold, my mom’s house is a dragon’s hoard full of every kind of randomness.  But I suck at commerce, I get overwhelmed trying to figure out the best way to sell various things, how much to ask, etc., and garage sales blend together commerce and social anxiety in a way that gives me hives, and I am utterly overwhelmed and defeated right now and I don’t know where to start. 

• Even some assistance formulating, and following up with me occasionally to see that I am stick with a PLAN of action would be an amazing piece of help.  I do this for other people in my job all the time.  I apparently am not capable of doing it to myself.

• If you are willing or able to come over and help sell stuff, I’d be happy to give you a cut of whatever we get.  Like I keep trying to tell everyone, any amount of money is more than the no money you currently have, going through and selling this stuff is a lot of work, and I don’t know many people who can afford to work without getting some kind of compensation for their time.

• Advice would even help: is there anyone out there who could help me start going through this, or who can at least give me some advice on how to sell stuff like Fenton art glass, and tons of fabric? 

• Physical organization/mental health solidarity would also help.  Does anyone have the time or energy to meet me over at one of the houses some time, and spend an afternoon helping me pull stuff out that we can sell and getting it ready?  Or, do you want to help me throw the mother of all yard sales?  Like, how do I even advertise a yard sale so we can sell some of this collectible stuff to the people who would be interested in it?  I don’t know how to do these things properly, and I have a hard time doing things I don’t know how to do right.

• Do you know how to sell busted cars, because we’ve got a Mustang and an SUV that are both not running, but at least have some value in parts, and so forth?  How about snow tires, and random old card parts for a Pontiac my dad was going to fix up one day, but didn't get the chance.

• How about records, does anyone know the best way to sell a bunch of LPs, like Beatles, Sgt. Peppers with the original cutouts and everything?  Or sewing machines? Or a welding tank?  Or freaking horse tack?  (My mom still has Roy Tan’s saddle and tack in her garage; Roy Tan was the horse she had when I was a baby that was sold when I was three because he bit me.  WHY DO WE STILL HAVE HIS SADDLE IN THE GARAGE?!?)  Hyperventilating now . . . let me get it reigned (ha ha) back in.

• Does anyone know any reliable antique pickers who’d be able to look through the antique tools that daddy salvaged from my grandpa’s shops?

• Do you by chance just want to buy a bunch of Fenton art glass, random horse tack, antique tools, and random fabric?   Because I can also help you out there.  Are there agencies or people who do this stuff, and do you know any who are reliable?

I don’t know how to think about it or get started, or get organized or anything, but I feel like if I had even just a little bit of help from people who aren’t so painfully emotionally invested in the stuff and the situation, that we might be able to get some traction, and once we do, it might feel less futile and overwhelming, and make it easier to keep going.

I don’t know.  I don’t know what help exactly to ask for, because I don’t know what is reasonable to ask, so I’m just generally asking for help.

I’ll also take advice, but (no offense, this is frustration over how many dozens of fruitless phone calls I’ve made) before you say “I think there are agencies that will help with that, have you called x?”.   I probably have, but go ahead and mention them, and I’ll add them to the list just in case I’ve missed one.  I lost track of exactly how many different agencies I’ve been in contact with, after it got to the point that they started just referring me back to try places that I had already talked to.  I called every kind of senior services, adult assistance, mortgage help, whatever aid agency you can think of at the local, county, and state level. 

We also talked to a lawyer, we talked to an accountant, we talked to a real estate agent and a mortgage broker, I even crossed a line and consulted my LSAT students, because one of them is a tax-law professional, and some have connected parents who know things, and the answer has overwhelmingly been the same: My mom makes just enough money to not qualify for any kind of low-income or age-related assistance, there is no way she’s getting out of her taxes, but a lawyer could make the IRS leave her alone, she can’t refinance the mortgage, at least until she gets out of hoc and stays that way for an entire year, she doesn’t meet the conditions for an involuntary conservatorship or anything like that, and above all, with housing prices as they are, the number of people with their housing at risk, and the amount of equity she has in her house, it’s in everyone’s best interests for us to move mountains, if we have to, to keep her from losing her stupid. 

The problem is that moving mountains seems pretty easy compared with what we have to do.  Give me a mountain to move, I’ll damn sure get it moved.  Ask me to sell off a dragon’s hoard, though, and I can’t even start. 

And lastly, I’m sorry.  This is the first time I’ve even been able to talk about it openly in any kind of coherent sense, because I feel guilty talking about it, there is too much to explain in a passing conversation, it’s a pretty gigantic freaking downer, and it’s also hard to even organize my thoughts around what all is at stake, to just lay it all out to see how bad it really is.  But there, it’s all laid out, now, and it seems a little less overwhelming than it did before, so maybe, if nothing else, I’ve managed to help myself a bit so I can function better.  At the expense of my family’s honor and pride, of course, but honor and pride got us all here, and it doesn’t seem to be getting us out…

Thank you for reading, if you’ve kept at it this long.  If nothing else, it helps not feeling all alone with this, and having it out of my head.  -sigh-  Maybe now I can get some stuff done.

*The first rule of the codependent, dysfunctional family is that you do not speak about the codependent, dysfunctional family to anyone outside of the family.  You don’t tell people what’s going on at home, you keep your friends away from your house, you don’t bring shame on the family by exposing their behavior, and above all, you don’t risk other people pointing out to you that, “hey, you know that’s not how other families work, right?  You don’t ‘have to’ keep playing this game if you don’t want to.”  But if it never even occurs to you to ask “is this normal?” and compare notes with people on the outside, you just grow up assuming it is, marry someone from the same type of family, teach it to your kids, and the cycle repeats…