I'd love to write comedy because my family is so absurd that it seems to lend itself to the genre. It's been a hell of a year, Nana died Sept 25 nearing the age of 97. Brother John at age 47 had a life threatening aneurysm break on the golf course but miraculously is recovering well. Then last week the patriarch bastard died. The long and storied and complicated drama that was my father's relationship with the five of us kids is sometimes hard to comprehend. I escaped west when I was 20, had my family of three awesome kids, and have pretty much kept my distance, although not in a nasty way, concerning my dad. Every couple of years or so I'd visit while I was east and seeing the rest of family. The last visit was a one on one at his house about 18 months ago. I figured if either of us had any issue or question we wanted to bring up, that would've been the time. Neither ventured forth, I believe at least on my end, because I'd long given up the anger associated with the way he left the family and never looked back. So after some chit chat and a couple of his disparaging remarks about my siblings for which he was famous for, I left his house for the last time in his life. While my siblings all had very contentious and combative relationships with dad through the years and I've always felt content that I'd made peace with the past. Life's too short to worry if either parent, or anyone for that matter, approves of your life, your choices or your kids. So I guess I should've just stayed away after I got the call that he had died last Thursday, or thereabouts. The drama though, I was still to learn, was just beginning. While my mom was destitute through the years to the point where she lived with her mother for decades, my father was amassing wealth from his inheritance of stocks and bonds and the million dollar house in a toney Andover Mass neighborhood. SOOO, when the contents of the will were revealed, it was no surprise that two of the siblings, myself and brother John (with whom years of running a business together with my father proved too much to keep any kind of cordial relationship going) were specifically notated for omission. The wording, to the effect of "it is no mistake" that these two are not listed in said will were words he must have reveled in over the years, as the will was written June 18, 2003. Even in death the lack of good will and decency lives on, so to speak. The unfolding of the probate will be quite an ordeal of which I, very thankfully I might add, will not have to partake or witness. This is a blessing which it seems, judging from my dad's actions, must be an unintended consequence. That I will not spend the next year depending on my brother as "Executor" to handle things in a coherent and ethical fashion is a bullet I'm happy to dodge. Not to mention that any mourning or unresolved feelings, which were minimal at best, are now replaced with a final closure that quite honestly feels great. So back to Montana to pick up my life where it left off before I got the phone call that I was now half-orphaned. However, several days remain of which I feel assured more drama and histrionics will reveal themselves. Stay tuned, epilogue very likely to follow........
THIS JUST IN: two funny notes of interest, (if you have a twisted sense of humor like I do) the high class burial plot in Auburn Hills Cemetery that the family bragged about all these years, (my grandmother in fact telling my mom early in her marriage to my dad that there was just enough room for my father and his brother but not her) was total fiction. NO SUCH PLOT in existence after the funeral home spent an exhaustive afternoon researching. #2 The drunk driving incident in which my dad hit a bicycle with rider is still an outstanding lawsuit against my dad, and now against his estate, which could drag onto eons and drain the "inheritance".
