The Family Jewels - Part One

I was a B- student in high school. I made straight A's like my brothers until seventh grade. The school went to modular scheduling, rendering me an hour or two of free time a day, and I used my breaks to sneak cigarettes, looking at Charlotte's tits and nipples, and dreaming of running away or killing myself.

I came home with a 76 on a history test, and my father went wild. Trembling with rage, he picked up my history book, flipped to a random page, and told me that I was going to be locked in my room until I memorized the entire page perfectly and recited it perfectly to him. He told me that I was going to do something perfectly once in my life.

And so it came to pass that I was locked in my room for three days. He was enraged and out of control, and he tested me and then terrorized me when I failed every hour he was awake and not at work.

When he was at work, my mother had no sympathy for me. She wouldn't let me out of my room. She made me study memorizing that history book page. I don't remember much else about it except wondering if I was going to have to kill myself to get out of this insanity. I didn't study very much. I fantasized about killing him, killing myself, running away.

Bad Craziness

This past week: Time for Father to leave the facility he's in. He is adamant that he is going home with round the clock help. My brothers and I have a number of conversations with his physician, his nurse, and his social worker. We determine, independently and objectively, that he would be better off going to a non acute rehab facility than home.

He could have his bed moved to the ground floor, and he could shit in a porto john. His house isn't set up for a handicapped person save for the wheelchair ramps (which we built for my mother five years ago). I don't see how he's going to be able to take a bath. He will get drive by rehab three times a week, but it won't be very thorough. And it's going to cost $72K a year.

At the nonacute rehab facility, he will get comprehensive therapy four times a week. He could get stronger, be fitted for a prothesis, learn how to walk with it, and then go home with some assistance. Cost is probably the same, but medicare will cover it.

Which is a good thing, as he is running out of money. His burn rate is significant, because he refused to sign up for medicare and has been paying for my mother's nursing home out of his pocket (80k a year). He runs out in three years if he doesn't sell his house or go on medicare.

And so we reported this to our father Thursday morning by conference call, and let me tell you that he was loaded to hunt bear. He was just waiting there, in his hospital bed, stewing and thinking about how we was going to let us have it. It was the rudest conversation I've ever had, and I didn't say much during it. He was unrelentingly hostile. He mocked my older brother for making a recommendation to him, the physician, when we were all mere lawyers. He claimed that live in help at his home would cost him $6,000 per year which was imminently affordable. I pointed out that worked out to $152 a week, considerably less than the minimum wage, he took my fucking head off. "OK Mr. Lawyer, I made a mistake. I don't know shit." And he set after me.

My older brother tried to cool things down by asking both of us to stop fighting. When he wouldn't let me speak, I screamed "FUCK" in exasperation and told Lee that my father never liked me, does not like me, doesn't listen to me, doesn't know how to behave and doesn't even want to try - and this was all a fucking waste of my time and not to rope me in to this shit again. And I hung up.

My father called yesterday morning to summon me to his bedside to resolve things between him and me. I've been through this particular exercise quite a few times with him over the years.

The first time, he said he did not remember specific incidents of abuse, and that most of what I remembered did not happen. I was infuriated. I did make sure to check with my younger brother to verify that I wasn't crazy and all the shit I remembered - the empty bottles in the trunk of his car, under his bed, in his closet, being locked in a room for three days.

I think the single most traumatic memory I have is of being locked in my room for three days and being forced to memorize a random page in a history book so that I would "do something perfectly once in my life. He was enraged and out of control, and he tested me and then terrorized me when I failed every hour he was awake and not at work. I had come home with a 76 or 78 in a science test.

When he was at work, my mother had no sympathy for me. She wouldn't let me out of my room. She made me study memorizing that history book page. I don't remember much else about it except wondering if I was going to have to kill myself to get out of this insanity. I didn't study very much. I fantasized about killing him, killing myself, running away.

Last time we had "the TALK" he was going into the hospital to have his big toe cut off, and he told me he was sorry that he was such a shitty parent. He said he didn't realize he was being one while he was being one. I gently told him to worry about his health instead of his failings as a parent. I even said "It isn't like children come with instruction manuals." I was trying to be polite.

A week later, he was yelling at me again.

So I wasn't anxious to have "the TALK" again. In fact, I wasn't going to have "the TALK" again. I told him I wasn't going to visit with him. He asked why not, and I told him that he was unremittingly rude, that I'd warned him that I wouldn't help him if he was abusive, and I was done. He asked me if I'd ever considered the possibility that some of the things I remembered didn't happen, and at that point I lost it.

I told that he could be as hurt as he wanted to be, and could get as made as he wanted to get, but I'd been apologizing for him all of my life, from during my summer jobs at the hospital at which he practiced to the current medical care regime, and I'd spent decades trying to please him only to fail because he didn't know what he wanted. I told him that he enjoyed being rude to people. He told me he didn't want to lose a son, and I told him that he already had. He said "well, that's certainly clear enough." I told him his legacy was one of failed marriages, infidelity, drug abuse, and nomadism among his children, and to be proud of it. I told him that if you kick a dog enough times, he'll bite, to which he said "I know that from this call." He said "OK, you blame me for everything." I said "no, I don't, we are responsible for what happened in our life, but you helped cause it. He told me he was shocked by this news - absolutely shocked. I asked him if he really thought that his yelling at me all of the time really was going to endear him to me? I told him I couldn't be responsible for his delusions. Then I hung up.

Later in the day, my father decided that he wanted to go to a nonacute rehab facility. He scheduled a conference all with his children this morning. My older brother asked me if I wanted to participate, and I declined. He said that was probably for the best, since my father had said he wanted to have "the TALK" with my older brother and said a few provocative things.

They had the call this morning, and my younger brother reports that he was well behaved, and tried to ask him what "was up" with me. I chuckled. I don't think I could have been any clearer.

And here's where we stand in life with father. It's bad craziness, and it's ugly, and it's insane, and I JUST WANT IT TO STOP. I wrote all of this shit out with the thought that I'd read it tomorrow and start to determine whether I'm being an asshole or whether I'm justified cutting off my relationship with my father because he really is a "toxic parent." But now, at 3 in the morning, I just want it to stop. I don't want to have "the TALK" with him. I don't want to hear that the evil I remember never happened. I don't want to have to listen to him yell anymore, and I don't want to clean up after he's shit on something again.

I also wrote this shit out because I just can't believe that this kind of crap goes on in any other family. This is seriously fucked, from my father's behavior, the trama I feel when he cranks up his war with me, and the dissipation of his fortune because he's afraid the other Jews in town will gossip if he goes on Medicare. It is at times like this, and they are increasing, when I wish I was part of a different family.

Is your family like this? Do the members of your family treat each other like shit? Do you have a serial adulterer in the house? A recluse? A morbidly obese asshole?

Ambivalence

My father is infirm, terrified of the future, and has been through a significant amount of trama over the past 7 weeks. One day he had a life, miserable as it was, living alone, with two cats to love, a car to take him anywhere he wanted, and the freedom to watch TV deep into the night. Now, a mere seven weeks later, he's had body parts chopped off of him on an emergency basis three times, he's lost his fucking leg, and his life as he knew it is over. He hasn't completely accepted his lot, and he is scared of the future.

I realize what he is going through in my more rational moments. At times, I even have empathy for him. Unfortunately, more often than not my empathy is replaced by a stronger malvolence due to his drinking, his abuse of my mother, his abuse of me and his other children, and his continued habit of walking this earth feeling entitled to cuss out anyone who tells him something he does not want to hear. He is a bully, a coward, a fucking dry drunk, and genuinely not a nice person.

I find myself wondering if he was ever a decent person. I wonder what it was like when he loved my mother. I wonder if he always resented my presence on this earth, or whether he acquired his hatred of me after I was born, and if so, I wonder what prompted it. I wonder what caused his misery. I wonder what caused him to destroy his life and to attempt to destroy those around him in such a spectacular fashion.

I tell myself at times that it doesn't matter how I treat him now; he will be dead and it will all be forgotten or buried, and what's meaningful after you die? At other times, I tell myself that I ought to visit him and do what I can for him just so that my children do not hate me and ignore me when I am old. I'm still not able to grapple with the notion that I ought to visit him and do what I can for him because he is my father, period.

My older brother once stole money from me, and told me that I should not be angry at him because he was my brother. His theory was that he got a pass because of our familial ties. I disagreed - I thought that a higher duty was owed me because of our familial ties. And when someone tells me to forgive my father for his transgressions, I think that he owed me a higher duty because I am his son. God knows I lived up to that duty to him. I never got arrested (unlike my brothers), never got suspended from school, never got into any trouble, graduated from college on time, and was financially independent the day I finished school. And I ask what it was in me that made him despise me so much.

Daddy Dearest Ratfucking My Mother...Again

Got the news today that Daddy Dearest won't be walking again. He, of course, told them that he wasn't going to a nursing home. He insisted that he is going back home with full time help - at a cost of $144K per year.

Hello....Daddy Dearest doesn't have that kind of money. At that burn rate, he will run out in three years. Leaving my mother, who is in a nursing home, penniless. That, of course, doesn't bother him in the slightest. Not a surprise, since it is all about him all the time. He's always been a selfish bastard.

Of course, when my mother became wheelchair bound due to a massive cerebral bleed, he instantly said that he couldn't afford the help necessary to keep her at home. He planned to leave her in the cheapest dump possible, and live with his mistress who the family affectionately calls the Office Whore. We, his children, thwarted him by threatening to sue him on our mother's behalf and to ruin him. Of course, that didn't stop him from putting her in the cheapest dump possible - where she did not get any rehab at all during the critical first six months of her recovery, thereby insuring she would remain crippled - but we did manage to get him to put her in a better nursing home (which has banned him, by the way, insuring that he will never live with his wife again). And I still pay for her rehab.

It's going to be interesting to watch my brothers tell him that he's going to a nursing home. Perhaps the best strategy is to express great pleasure that mom is finally going home to live with him - which I think is the last thing he wants.

The Shit

I took a power shit this morning and my asshole emitted this foul, black diarrhea. The stench was unbelievably horrific. I carried the stench of that shit in my nostrils all the way to work.

An hour after getting to work, I felt ill - very ill - so I left and drove home. Why is it that the urge to shit becomes more and more unbearable the closer you get to your home toilet? I walked through the door, ass cheeks pressed tightly together, holding the shit in. I had to let er rip as I was swinging down onto the toilet. A big pile landed on the toilet seat, and I promptly sat in it.

And again, the stench was unbelievably horrific. I scrubbed my ass cheeks and thighs for half an hour after finishing the shit, and I still smell it.

Fini

Went to see the old bastard, powers of attorney in hand. A few weeks ago he asked that we take over paying his bills for him. When I told him (nicely) he had to behave, he flew into a rage and threw me out of his hospital room.

So I went to see the old bastard with the powers of attorney for him to sign. I did it because I promised my brothers I would do it so that they could take over his financial affairs. Turns out the old bastard wants to stay in the hospital he's at - it isn't so bad after all. Of course, he wanted me to call all the people he'd cussed out to get the transfer voided, and of course I declined. It will do the old bastard some good to have to deal with the bad feelings and ire he has caused.

This past weekend, my father called my wife - who is spending the summer at the beach with my children - and asked her to bring him some diarrhea medicine. When I was in college in the north, his mother called me to tell me that my grandfather had fallen and broken his arm three days prior - instead of calling her son the doctor who lived three miles away. Sound familiar anyone?

It feels good to finally be done with the old bastard, although my older brother keeps calling me and urging me to reconcile with the old bastard yet again.

In Hiding

I've spent the weekend in hiding from my family. I don't want to have anything to do with my father, and he's currently in one of his rages which can last for weeks. Every single time I decide to break with the asshole, one of my brothers convinces me that I am being immature and should reconcile with him. And every time I reconcile with him, he cusses me out again shortly afterwards. I don't think he can help it; I don't think he has ever liked me.

I used to see a shrink. 12 years of the shrink, in fact. The shrink was well known; he was the shrink that put Ted Turner on Lithium. The shrink was initially hired to teach me to be charming, as I had been an asshole at work much like my father. So much for role models. The shrink pointed out that my father was insane. He also speculated that I was illegitimate and the product of an affair my mother had; it was a ready explanation for his distemper and his distaste for me. Could very well be true. It's not like I even look like any of my brothers...