The end of rage

When my mother died on the operating table in 1973 my mentally ill father, he suffered from acute schizophrenia and clinical depression, had the presence of mind to file a malpractice suit against the doctors and the hospital that killed her. Most every one on both sides of the family said he was stupid to do so but in 1979 it was finally settled and each of us surviving children and my dad got $10,000 each and they admitted that the death of my mom was their fault.

My brother Charlie spent a bunch of his money right away on drugs, a Windjammer cruise, and other things before he went off to the Navy. I'm not sure what my sister Sandy spent hers on but she ran through it pretty quick. I have no idea what my brother Karl spent his on because he didn't live with us. The deal with me was since I was under 18 that money was supposed to be put in a trust fund and go to me in a few months when I finally came of legal age. But my Aunt Rageaholic had other ideas for that cash.

She had opened a restaurant in Lee county called the Wagon Wheel and it lost money from day one. It not only lost money, it sucked money out of the air. If money came around the restaurant gobbled it up like a family values Republican gobbles up hookers and gay sex. She tried everything to make a go of that place, from selling beer and letting people brown bag liquor on the weekends to having live music to wooing the stuck up intolerant religious crowds with an after church Sunday buffet. Nothing worked. And as she lost partner after partner she went deeper into debt and each new partner she found was shadier than the last.

Unlike her kids, I worked my ass off in that restaurant. I 'cooked,' which meant I deep fried shit and manned the grill, I did dishes, waited tables, cleaned, and ran the register when needed. Her kids lived off the glory of having a mother who owned and ran a restaurant, but I was the one who had to actually do the hard work and take the abuse of their nutty mother and her increasingly shady partners.

After I got my money from my mother's malpractice suit I was told to open a checking account in the local bank with it. I had no choice but to obey. I spent maybe $500 of that money on pot, it was only $40 an ounce back then, a new pair of glasses, it was my first pair that weren't el cheap-o black horn rims that my aunt always bought me, some clothes, some magazines, and some record albums. I didn't have much time to spend it because I was going to high school during the day and working at the restaurant at night and on the weekends, for little or no pay I might add.

One day my aunt and her last partner came to me and said they needed to 'borrow' all the cash I had in the bank. They told me they had to pay the light bill, the restaurant supply company, and other bills at the Wagon Wheel. I didn't want to do it but she forced me to. She claimed that they'd pay me back in a week or so and that I was not to worry.

Unfortunately for me I never saw that money again. The restaurant went soon belly up and she declared bankruptcy. Her partner stole everything that wasn't nailed down and I ended up with nothing. The money that I was going to use to pay for my college education was gone and when I asked about it I was told to shut up an be happy that I still had a roof over my head and food on the table.

The reason I tell you this is because the woman who stole the money I got as a result of my mother being killed by incompetent doctors died. Last May. And I just found out about it yesterday.

The reason I wasn't told about her death, she had pancreatic cancer and had refused chemo, was because her children, the cousins I was raised with from the age of 10 who I was told to think of as my brothers and sisters, didn't want me around to remind them of how their mother stole my money and mistreated me and my siblings. They didn't want me around to remind them of how differently their mother treated the two sets of children, hers could do virtually no wrong while me and my siblings could do no right. They didn't want me around when they read the will because it would remind of them of how she stole the money I received because someone killed my mother. They also didn't want me to remind them that all the while growing up the state of Michigan and the commonwealth of Virginia paid their mother cash money to take me and my siblings in and that every pay day that we had from jobs that we worked outside her house or restaurant she made us give her a cut of as well.

After my heart attack my cardiologist told me to reduce the stresses in my life and my crazy Aunt Gerrie and the shit she did to me during those years in Lee county was a major source of stress, and so were her greedy children. So I cut off contact with them. Then I heard that she had cancer and I was hoping that she'd want to clear her conscience and do the right thing before she died and pay me back that money she stole from me, or at least pay it back to me in her will. But it was a false hope. After all, she maintained steadfastly in her final years that she treated all the kids she raised the same, which was out and out bullshit. So, she's dead and I was obviously not in her will and I'm sure she left money to her kids and their kids as well. Which means that those kids of her kids will get a leg up financially, which is something she stole from me. Ironic huh.

Even with all the shit she did to me, the stealing of my money and the verbal and physical abuse she and her kids heaped on me and my brothers and sister, I never hated her. But I did pity her. As she got older all her kids and grandkids moved further and further away from her and they found less and less time to go see her. Most all of her friends deserted her as well because she was such a manipulative controlling woman. She's gone and I'll probably never speak to or see her greedy kids again, maybe it's worth $9500 to have them out of my life for good.