Tuesday October 11th, 2011 - Chicago, IL Got a phone call from my cousin Brett in the middle of dinner informing me his father, who is also my uncle, is in the final stages of cancer and not long for this world. Neither one of us showed any emotion, and he said he’d keep me posted on everything. I hung up and finished my dinner, trying to get the bad taste out of my mouth. I wasn’t able to do it. I come from an unusual breeding stock to say the least. Most of my family lineage has a piss poor parenting pedigree, and I’ve been extremely careful not to perpetuate that putrid pox on offspring of my own. For some reason, parental skills are pitifully lacking with the majority of my bloodline, but most of them are defiant to the end and never ever cop to it. Brett and his father never got along much like my old man and I didn’t. The strange part is that Brett always was able to at least be in the same room with my father, and I was fine with his for much of my life. Problems only came up when it was a father and son thing. Apparently, both my uncle and my father never got along with their father, who was my grandfather - and the one person in my life who I credit with keeping me out of prison or dead at an early age. His parenting skills were tremendous with me, but not his own sons. What an inbred genetic train wreck this all is and has been for way too long, but now it appears to finally be ending after a lot of ugliness and hurt feelings. My uncle is the final piece of that generational puzzle, as the rest of the players are all dead. It’s finally over. The reason Brett and I had no emotions today is that the damage is already done. We’ve both chosen to not accept the way we were treated, and neither one of us considered those who donated sperm to be our fathers. They weren’t. They were sources of pain and agony. Neither of us spoke to our fathers for years, and now it will all end with no feelings at all. The whole thing is just a hollow rotten tumor, and I’m glad it’s over. My uncle lived his life in misery, never having the guts to chase his big dream of owning his own restaurant. He loved to cook and was very good at it, but instead he toiled away at a civil service job for thirty years that he hated and stretched out his misery over a lifetime. What a waste. I had my own issues with him for a long time. He did taxes on the side, and most of the family used him to file our returns every year. When my grandfather died, I was included in the will as an equal son, since my grandfather raised me as a son. That didn’t sit well at all with my father and uncle, and they were bound and determined not to let that happen. I trusted my uncle, and one year he told me to sign some paperwork concerning the will. I did it without question. What an idiot. I was naïve and stupid, and doing it cost me all of the money I was supposed to inherit. Years later I looked up the will in public records and took it to a lawyer and was told I was too late. I’d signed away my share and he said I was out of luck as far as trying to get it back. I wasn’t so angry about losing out on the cash as much as I was for the way it happened. It was pretty low class to be such a sneaky snake. I stewed over it for years, and lost a lot of sleep. I tried to figure out exactly how much it ended up costing me, and the figure I came up with was $100,000 to $150,000. I could have really used that money then and still could, but alas it wasn’t in the cards. It’s gone. Was that a good thing? Maybe it was. I’ve never claimed to be a financial whiz and that might have been a dangerous thing. Nothing guarantees I wouldn’t have pissed it away on ‘Hershey bars and Archie comics’ as Gramps used to say and it would all be gone by now anyway. That’s not the point. The point is Gramps chose to cut me in for an equal share. I don’t know the details of how much my father was in on it, by I know he wasn’t happy that I was included in the will. He used to make nasty comments about it constantly and it made its way back to me through the family grapevine. Whatever. It wasn‘t my doing. I know I’m not the only person ever to be screwed out of money in a will, and I’m sure I could have been smarter and fought for it but it was all so ugly at the time I didn’t want to deal with it. I wanted there to be peace and happiness for all of us. What a dummy I was. Looking back now, what really pisses me off is not the fact that I didn’t get my grubby paws on that money. I fully admit to being a financial pinhead, and that wad would have probably been used to buy baseball cards, vintage cars or open some kind of comedy club. Any or all of those plans would’ve blown up in my face and I’d be stone broke by now. I can live with that, but it sure would have been fun to try. Again, that’s water under the bridge. What pisses me off is that THEY didn’t do anything with it. Ok, say the total was an even hundred grand. Fifty each for my father and uncle. That could have been used for a lot of things, including opening a restaurant. I wouldn’t have been angry if he did that. Instead, both of them are going to end up dying broke, bitter and alone. How sad that is. My father was a loser, and never chased any dreams. He had a defiant attitude to the end, and even when he knew he was dying he never made an attempt to change his direction. The same is apparently happening with my uncle. He’s on his way out the door, and he isn’t doing anything at the end to even make an attempt to make things right with Brett or me or anyone else for that matter. I always thought he liked me, but the minute I agreed to sign that paperwork he never talked to me again. His work was done, and I was history. That was a major source of pain and bitterness for years, and I won’t deny it. It’s all an ugly mean spirited memory, but it doesn’t bother me anymore. It really doesn’t. It would have been nice to have that money, but I survived without it. The wound has healed over. What’s really sad is that we were never the close knit family everyone wants and in my opinion deserves to have. If we can’t trust family, who can we trust? I’ve managed to stay alive on my own, and despite all my faults and mistakes I continue to keep plugging at my own pace. Some day I’ll be on my death bed, and I don’t want to have the same memories as those two do. I’m better than that. I forgive you uncle. Good luck. You’ll need it. Soon.
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