Cowgirl_Mom

Guess I haven't updated this...

Well, I just realized coming in here today that I haven't
updated what's been going on. Right after my last entry,
in fact, probably the same day, I found out that my uncle
died. He was my father's only sibling. But that is where
normalcy ends and the drama begins.
He died on a Sunday and we weren't notified until Thursday,
with a funeral pending the very next day. He died without
a will, and he didn't finish probating my grandmother's
will who died a little over 4 years ago. Turns out, he
didn't sign the final divorce decree for his second wife,
and she's in the penitentiary, due to be out in April of
2006. And he died an alcoholic and a smoker. He was a
probation officer for the last 20 years, and was too
trusting of people. The last female of his life took him
for just about everything he had. He had 4 car loans out
in his name, possessing only one, and only one other
actually paid in full (which is missing). Everything was
overdue - car note, taxes on the house, electric cut off
(although he had 3 other open accounts), gas and water cut
off (he had 2 other open accounts), numerous apartment
leases in his name, it goes on and on and on.
My grandparents' home had been broken into and just about
anything of value (down to the china and the silverware)
was stolen. He had lived in absolute squalor up until
January of 2005. He had trashed the house, truly trashed
it, and then moved around from place to place (from what we
can tell). Add to that the ransacking that went on from
the burglary, and we really have a mess on our hands. Not
to mention the legal battles of trying to separate what was
my grandparents and what was his, and therefore, community
property with his con wife.
My father's been placed on Xanax, although what he really
needed was an anti-depressant, my mother's been fed up with
my brother over telling her that she and my Dad need to go
to church, and I am packing up my sons and driving 2-2 1/2
hours every weekend out of town to go work on the house
with my parents. My Dad sits on the porch and goess
through things after my mother and I go through it and
bring it to him to go through, and my Mom helps with my
sons and just this past weekend finally got to a point that
she could work on the house too, and not get too
emotionally drawn into it.
I've had to remind my parents, we can't go through this
stuff and worry about what has been lost, but rather
celebrate what we have found. My uncle had led my parents
to believe that after grandma's death, he had cleaned out
the house and gotten rid of everything. It turns out, he
just boxed it up and moved it out back. He didn't deal
with my grandmother's death. Then when things went ugly
with his wife (she assaulted him) and she went away, he
redid the house as it was when my grandparents were alive.
Let's just say that the man had issues to deal with, but
unfortunately or fortunately, however you want to look at
it, he doesn't have to deal with them now. He died of a
pulmonary embolism. In layman's terms, he drowned on his
own blood.
Anyway, tack that into the fact that this past week my
mother-in-law was hospitalized for a blood clot in her leg,
I'm doing just hunky-dory!