THAT door (numbers edit)

 The TV show "Bones" is my Saturday night routine; two episodes are on channel 3, back to back.  I like the show, the characters, and the stories are not dull.

Tonight’s story, on the first episode, was about foster kids – one died, was murdered,and the story was about who did it and why.

Being a foster kid – I was threatened with that repeatedly, from 15 to 18.  My parents – our parents, I have a younger brother – died in 1977, about five months apart.  Mom died in the spring of diabetes related causes (heart attack) and dad died that fall, of what looked like a fall, when he hit his head, but was really a case of a broken heart.  That, I believe, drove him to drink too much and fall that night.

My birthday’s in March; they both died when I was 15, but my brother’s birthday is in October and dad died ten days after his 14th birthday.

I don’t write about my brother very much – hardly at all, really, and this may be the first time I’ve mentioned him here for years.  We are not close; in fact, I lost him for 21 years.  My wife and I moved here from Japan – he lived with us there for almost a year, but when we came to the US, he moved back to Pasadena in California, and didn’t move in with us at first.

Obviously, he did live with us here, for a while, and then left to go back south when he turned 25, to get his quarter of my dad’s estate. We both got half of our halves at 25.  I didn’t see him for 21 more years.

Dad was an aerospace engineer.  The last job he had was at JPL – the same guys who landed a rover on Mars last month.  Dad worked on the Voyager probes, both of which have left our solar system, having passed Jupiter and Neptune.  Both are still functioning, over 35 years later.  Dad wasn’t a janitor; he made some good money, and there was nearly a quarter million dollars in the estate after he died, after paying for mom’s hospitalizations, after paying off every other debt.  More than $225,000.

Those quarter shares turned out to be less than $25,000.  25 and 25 makes 50, and the second quarter shares amounted to less than $8,000.  50 and 16 does not make 225.  Close to two hundred thousand dollars (assuming interest on 225k) did not get passed on to his kids.

What the fuck?

My uncle, mom’s brother, was appointed our guardian and the estate’s assets were given to him to support us.  We were shipped off to a military school – a bad one – ten days after dad died.

He did not gain any points with us for that.  He also fancied himself an investor, and since it wasn’t HIS money, he lost, he says, most of it. And took NO responsibility for it.I COULD buy that, exceopt I hate the man and prefer to think of it as stolen money, taken just because he could, much like the gamblers on Wall Street lost other people’s money and NONE of their own – in fact, like my uncle, they got paid well to fuck things up.

The lawyer friend of my dad’s who drew up his will said that it gave my uncle total discretion with the estate and NO oversight and that there was nothing I could do.  I wonder if they shared their theft? Pissing on the asshole’s grave is the least of what I’d like to do, but last I heard the asshole is still alive and in his 90’s.  I’ll have to wait a bit more.

God damn republican asshole.  To hell with you and I wanna know about it.

I didn’t see my brother from 1988 until New years Day 2009. 21 years.  He ended up homeless on the streets of Los Angeles for a long time – I lost him and didn’t know where he was or if he was even still alive.  Some church group saved him, quote unquote, and I have a cell phone number of his.  Now, but for many many years, I did not know whether he was alive or dead or what. I kinda hoped that like the rest of the family that he just wasn’t talking to me.

***

THAT door is foster care.  We were threatened with that repeatedly, told that we’d get ripped off and live in bad conditions – we should keep the money in the family.

Ah, but we did get ripped off and we were living in squalid conditions, and when we complained, the old foster home hell was trotted out and see how fortunate we are?  The military school was NOT a good place.  I saw things there – I had bayonets and NO ONE was going to fuck with me.  My brother was a fighter and no one fucked with him, much.  Not after the first time. I have written about that place here, although I think that I have privatized them, and I hope that some of my long term readers remember them.  Hell on earth sounds overly dramatic – except you weren’t there and it’s not an overstatement at all.

I’ll repost those and you’ll judge for yourselves.

***

Time to go, for now, so I’ll stop here and take it up later.

Life goes in circles, I think.  I did end up in a foster home and I did lose everything, but I was 36 then, and had been in a car wreck.  I had little then and less now – that wreck cost me all but my life – and I did stay in an Adult Foster Home in 1998 for eight or nine months, recovering from the injuries in the wreck enough to live by myself.

So, it did happen – foster care and penniless.  Again.  I sometimes feel that I am not supposed to have any money, that my life is not supposed to be "easy", that any time I get something, I should wait until it gets "taken" away.  My parents, my cats, my brother, any kind of money at all – this life has been a series of losses.

I am glad that I didn’t die in the wreck – it was a close thing, and I I did die, for a few seconds  anyway, and they brought me back, but sometimes… well, I wish I didn’t survive.  At least, not for this life  I am dirt fucking poor, and if it wasn’t for my ex/former wife, K*, I wouldn’t even have dirt.  The family I married into, a Japanese family at that, has helped me more than my own family ever did.  We have been divorced since 1995, and they still help me, K* AND her mom and sister.

I have this desk that has been in my life from day one that my mom’s dad rebuilt – nice walnut and solid wood, no plywood shit here – I have the desk because I took it out of the storage unit my parent’s lives had been condensed to after they died when I moved up here in 1987.  Everything else has vanished.  All of it.  All of my life before 15 is g o n e.  All but this desk.

***

And yeah, I DO have an attitude

about that whole shitbag, and I DO have a chip on my shoulder where "family" is concerned.  I have no doubts about my former wife – she promised my mother’s grave, out loud, that she would take care of me.  When, in 2008 I asked her "WHY do you help me?  We are divorced you don’t have to". She said "I promised your mother.  A promise is a promise no matter what".  She is a woman who means exactly what she says.  No doubts at all there.

I guess none of the rest of the family made any promises, but, huh.  I wonder where the money went.  I wonder where every fucking thing my parents owned went.

Well, not really, I know it was all stolen.  Almost 200k in cash money and everything else.  Tell me I haven’t earned an attitude.

***

I did pass through THAT door, when I was 36, not 15,16,17, or 18.  Maybe I should be grateful?

I haven’t heard from my brother in almost a year now.

***

Sunday evening and I get a voice mail instead of a conversation.  At least I left a message with my new phone number.

 

*****