My mother writes everything down. Everything.
This is both a blessing and a curse for me.
On the one hand, I've been able to track the machinations of a**hole family member, who continues to badger Mom about her money and to manipulate her thoughts and feelings about another member of the family. Me.
(See, I interfered with some secret plans a**hole family member was working on related to my parents' will. Others, like the mortgage he had my mother take out on her home for his financial benefit, I couldn't do anything about. As a result of these incidents, I've been involved in a long-running legal battle to have a guardian and successor trustee appointed for my mother to protect her assets for her OWN future use. A**hole family member is enraged, and we have been estranged for nearly two years now. Sad. Very, very sad.)
Whenever I am able, I rummage through the mess of papers and little notebooks in Mom's room at the assisted living facility. If I find anything of particular interest or of a very damaging nature, I often tear the pages out of her notebooks and take the material home.
I have built up quite an extensive array of damning evidence of a**hole family member's attempts to influence Mom--money-wise--and to alienate her from me.
(Mom was diagnosed with dementia--probable Alzheimer's Disease, early moderate stage--in December, 2007.)
(Well, I'll save this cautionary tale for a later date. But, I will say this . . . after everything I've learned, I could write a book!)
On the other hand, Mom's scribblings give me tremendous insight and awareness into what's going on in her mind. What's there and what's lost; what's bubbling around just below the surface.
I found this note on a recent visit. It refers to her home, which was sold on June 15, 2009.
Well, her math is good, anyway.
Olney is a town in Maryland, about 15 or so miles north of Washington, DC.
I was born in October, 1955 . . . in Alexandria, Virginia.
My parents were married in 1952 and lived at two or three rental addresses before purchasing their first home on N. 23rd Street in Arlington, Virginia. Number 3807.
(Isn't it amazing how some small detail, like a house address from one's youth, can still be remembered decades later? How long will that last for me, I wonder?)
By the time the first reference appears about the N. 23rd Street house in a letter written by my father to his mother, the date is November 3, 1956. He tells his mother that he and Mom have found a house to buy, and that they are deep into decorating daydreams.
By then, my parents had two children already, me and my older brother, with a third expected the following spring. (Sadly, my two brothers would die within a decade.)
Another letter to my grandmother indicates that we are living at the new home in April, 1957, and that the third child had been born.
We lived there for roughly six years, until the summer of 1963, when our family moved to Frankfurt, Germany. Earlier that year, in January, a fourth child was born. He grew up to be known as a**hole family member.
We lived in Europe for just about one year (it's funny . . . it always felt longer to me), and returned to the DC metropolitan area in July, 1964.
After some months of living in temporary, short-term housing, my parents bought a home in Silver Spring, Maryland. Letters indicate that we were installed there sometime before December, 1964.
My parents owned this home for the next 18 years.
In 1982 or 1983, they purchased their home in Olney, Maryland, and it is this residence to which my mother refers in the above-pictured note.
When I was reading the note in my mother's room, she looked at it, too.
A look of confusion crossed her face, as she recollected living in a few other places, in addition to Olney.
She remarked that the family couldn't have lived very long at those other places, if she had lived in Olney for 54 years!
A**hole family member needs his a** kicked.
Posted by: Miz S | June 23, 2009 at 06:29 AM
Have you noticed that we seem to segment our lives according to where we live. Looking back on something we might say "Oh that happened when I was living over on 73rd Street" - even havning no clue what year it was.
I hope the a**hole gets over himself soon.
Posted by: Jen | June 24, 2009 at 02:34 PM