How to deal with toxic people…

We made it to present day here….well pretty much, and I am going to finish up the story and give you all the current bullshit that’s going on with my toxic family, but I wanted to take a break from all that and give you all some tips for dealing with Toxic people, whether they are psychopaths, sociopaths, narcissists or whatever. I should probably preface this with telling you guys that I am (very obviously) not a doctor or qualified mental health practitioner. I am just sharing with you guys what has and hasn’t worked for me, and how I respond to the negativity, the baiting, the antagonizing, the word twisting, the gaslighting, the projection and just straight up, bullshit lies and psychoticness. (That is so not a word, but you get it). So I am going to explain to you guys, how I’ve responded in the past and I’m going to give you all some tips that I have learned along the way. 

Tip #1: KNOW WHO YOU ARE

You guys may think I sound crazy here, and are saying to yourselves, “but it’s not me, it’s them”, and you’re right, most of the time it is them.  Bear with me for a moment. You need to step out of yourself, be honest and try to look how you contribute to the toxicity, because you do contribute to it.  I know this sounds crazy, but NONE of us are perfect. We all have one or two traits that when we read about Narcs, psycho’s and Socio’s we start bugging out, and for a split second we think, “shit, am I the narcissist, here?”. Most likely, the answer is NO. Reason being is that no narcissist, sociopath or psychopath is going to even be reading that kind of shit! They do not care enough about other human beings to truly understand them. I followed the Jodi Arias trial EXTENSIVELY and I remember watching a psychologist’s commentary on the Dr. Drew show on HLN, about the case. He basically said that there is no such thing as “all good” and “all bad”. (That is called “splitting” and that’s how narcs, socio’s and psychopath’s view things). As hard as it to believe even the most evil of beings have one or two good qualities…..even Jodi Arias….ok not her, she’s pure fucking evil. Anyway, I agree with him, and so while we, “the victims” are probably mostly all good, we do possess a few bad qualities ourselves. 
The other thing to keep in mind here is that we cannot change other people. We cannot simply tell a narcissist to stop being a narcissist. God, if only it were that easy! We are only responsible for our own actions, and so with that said, we need to realize how we add to the bullshit, and we need to adjust our behaviors accordingly. I consider myself someone who is exceptionally self aware, good and bad. I have an innate ability to push people’s buttons. I am sarcastic. I am impulsive. I don’t always think before I speak, and at times I don’t know when to stop or how to filter my language. While I always knew these things about myself, I was not able to see how those things contributed to my relationships with the toxic people in my life, and how I was making things even more toxic, until recently when I took a step back and analyzed my relationships with these people. Unfortunately when tragedy strikes, you see people’s true colors. 

A perfect example of how I contribute to the toxicity; I cannot take when people think they are getting one over on me. It fucking kills me. I don’t like when people think that I’m stupid and cannot read between the lines. I am a venter. I need to express my feelings. If something is wrong, I feel like it HAS to be known, I cannot hold back.  Back before my mom passed, I was taking my anger out in an unhealthy, passive aggressive way. I would see quotes and stuff on Facebook, and feel like I could relate them to what I was going through with my family, and so I’d post them. My aunts (and their guilty consciences) being the same way, they would see my posts and then they’d go seek out their own posts or make passive aggressive comments. It got to a point where I stopped, but they kept going. It’s very hard for me not to jump down their throats and call out their contradictions and/or hypocrisy. I didn’t need the added stress at that time of fighting with them, and so I made the decision to unfriend all of them on Facebook so their posts would no longer show up on my newsfeed. I know I have issues with impulse control (thanks ADHD) and so me not seeing them would help me control MY behavior. If I don’t have the temptation there then I can better control how I react to them. 
Tip #2: YOU AREN’T OBLIGATED TO RESPOND

This sounds so simple and if you’re anything like me, it’s not that easy to do. You have to remember that toxic people like to fight, argue, disrupt, inflame, incite riots, and cause chaos, that’s what makes them toxic. 9 out 10 times they are trying to draw you out of your fox hole so they can fulfill that need, or so they can further exploit you. If you don’t respond, you are not adding more gasoline to their fire….. you are putting out their flame. In the past four months I have held back and bit my tongue, and I have noticed that the more I ignore the toxic people in my life, the more angry and starved for attention they become, just like a flame needs oxygen to keep burning. 

If you want to piss them off, ignore them! The worst thing for a narcissist or psychopath is losing their “supply”. Don’t be their supply.

 I am normally very reactive, but I completely switched up my game. I was in a lose/lose situation with my family. I started to realize that it doesn’t really matter how gently  I approached them, I am always in the wrong. I am the family scapegoat. They’ve been antagonizing me because they want to prove to everyone that they are right, and I am the asshole. The more I ignore it and press on with what I have to do, the more angry and desperate they become, and now instead of exposing me, they are exposing themselves, and the people around them are starting to see the sickness without me saying or doing anything. 

Now, keep in mind, I am not saying that you should never respond, or stick up for yourself, or that you should walk on eggshells, and tip toe around them, not at all. I’m trying to tell you that you need to control if and how you’re going to respond to them because your responses are what’s going to dictate how the conversation goes and how much abuse you receive in return. When you are dealing with people who are just going to twist whatever you say around, it’s not worth your time to try to convince them of your side. I had to learn this the hard way. 

Deaf people do not listen! 
Tip #3: RESPOND, BUT DON’T RESPOND 
This blog is one big response to the toxic people in my life. Writing is what kept me sane during my horribly hormonal, high school years. I kept a journal and I wrote in it every night. I stopped writing somewhere around my last year of college and I realized recently that it was a great and safe way to for me to cope with what I am going through.

I have received a few letters from my brother and my aunts in the last few months and I now realize that responding to them and giving them a dose of reality does absolutely nothing, because all they will do is deflect, deny or disregard the truth.  They have no interest in the truth. I now realize that my best option is write them back, but never send it to them! It helps me get out the things I want to say, but I don’t have to deal with the backlash or bullshit that comes with it. I don’t have to deal with the frustration of their lack of acknowledgement or accountability. Trust me. I would love nothing more than tearing these toxic assholes to SHREDS, but I’ve realized now that it does me absolutely no good. I will never get back the honest reply that I am hoping for. I will never get validated by them, and so with that I take care of my urge to respond, but I don’t feed the beast. 

Tip #4:KEEP YOUR FRIENDS CLOSE AND YOUR ENEMIES EVEN CLOSER

Ok not really close. By close I mean, know who they are. Really take a look at the people you are dealing with and ask yourself, is it me or them? My aunt Debbie is a great example here. I was very close with my Aunt Debbie’s daughter Tina. I would spend hours on the phone with Tina as she complained about aunt Debbie and how Aunt Debbie treated her. I sat back one day and really analyzed Aunt Debbie  as aperson and I saw who she really was. Aunt Debbie has been married twice, and has had a long string of failed relationships in the last decade. She is 60 years old, lonely and bitter. She is constantly surrounded by conflict, because I think she actually enjoys the conflict. It gives her something to do and something to talk about since her life is so pathetic.  My mom and Aunt Debbie talked every day and my mom would always tell me how Aunt Debbie always seems to be fighting with someone. She has MANY friends with whom she has had fights with, and hasn’t spoken to in years. She stops talking to them for years at a time and some she cuts off completely, and it doesn’t matter how long they’ve known one another.  Usually it’s over something really stupid and trivial. Aunt Debbie is spiteful and vindictive, even with her own daughter.  Knowing this about her helps me know that it’s not me. She has a high conflict personality. She always needs to be right even if it means cutting off her nose to spite her own face.  I have never met someone who has fights with their friends the way she does. So you need to look at the toxic person and ask if they are surrounded by conflict. Once you determine that, you know that most likely this is a person who isn’t going to take anything that you have to say to heart. Even if you are right, they will never admit it because they are too stubborn. Trying to point out the truth or trying to resolve issues with a person like that is going to be very difficult unless you just completely give in, kiss their asses and grovel for forgiveness, even if all you did was defend yourself against one of their cruel and senseless attacks. 

Tip #5 DON’T RESPOND EVEN BY PROXY

 
Most people you’d deem toxic in your life are also highly manipulative. They also like to “triangulate” and/or recruit others into their battles and crusades. If you truly don’t want to deal with their drama, don’t talk about them with mutual friends or other family members.  If you do, don’t talk shit about them. Don’t give them anything to hold against you. A lot of people will pretend and play both sides of the fence because let’s face it, sometimes it’s straight up entertainment to hear other people’s drama and bullshit. Your words may get skewed and taken out of context like a big ol game of telephone. Just remember those who gossip with you, probably gossip about you. You never know if they will slip up and tell them something you said about the toxic person. 

My aunts and my brother have been trying to reach me but I haven’t responded because at this point in the game, my lawyer has told me not to respond and not to put anything in writing. First my brother wrote me and email and then Aunt Bea. When that didn’t work Aunt Debbie tried to speak through my Aunt Dana who is in no way involved in our conflict. Her attempt to contact me was meant to be manipulative to both me and Aunt Dana. She was trying to get Aunt Dana to “talk some sense into me” and so she asked her to deliver a message. My response to Aunt Dana was, my name and phone number and the name and phone number of my lawyer. I told aunt Dana that I will NOT be communicating through her. When aunt Dana gave Aunt Debbie my response,she said, “that’s all she had to say?”. That right there showed me that she was looking for more from me. She wanted me to respond to the drama but I refused. 

Tip #6 – KEEP RECORDS

 
This tip is probably the single, most important tip I can give you. Of course it’s just not possible to record every single conversation you have, but if you are involved in conflict with a toxic personality or you are sensing a conflict with them, you are going to want to start keeping record of conversations. This was probably the absolute smartest thing I could do when it came to my family. I tried to keep all of our conversations in texts. If I was speaking with my brother there were times he’d try to call and I’d make some excuse up and tell him I was unable to answer my phone. Sure my storage on my phone is full all of the time, but I have a record of every word that was said. If someone tries to twist and obscure my words or even their own words, I have solid proof. When my brother went and lied to a lawyer about my mom having no will, he had sent my husband a text telling him that I can either hand over the will that names my aunt’s as executors or he will be filing for letters of administration. When he filed for letters of administration, he signed a sworn affidavit that said he did a diligent search for the will and determined that no will had ever existed. Clearly he was lying since he had acknowledged it in his text. Keeping records will help keep your sanity! 
Tip #7 KEEP IT BUSINESS
I realize that most of these tips are basically saying not to respond and not to feed into it, but there are times and situations in life where you have no choice but to converse with them. If and when you must communicate with them, keep it short and sweet, and to the point. Do not give them any more than what you have to give them. This leaves them with very little room to distract, deflect or twist words. Do not write to them or speak to them with any emotion or feeling about whatever topic you are discussing. Remember that toxic people do not care about your feelings, they only care about their feelings.  You almost have to be robotic when dealing with them. Do not give them too much detail or make it too lengthy. I’ve noticed that NONE of the toxic people in my life seem to know how to read or listen. I can tell by their responses that they aren’t fully paying attention. If they try to change the subject, stay the course, but do so without emotions or criticizing them. It took me a VERY long time to learn this, but I promise you, it is worth while. If you don’t come out of your face with them, they don’t know how to respond. They get really tripped up when you are calm, cool and collected. There were a few times I felt I had to share information with my aunts, in the last few months, and so I just wrote very short emails to them, got to the point, stayed real cordial and didn’t take any of their bait to try to reel me into an argument.  For instance, one of my mom’s neighbors saw a red SUV parked in my mom’s driveway, one day. I know aunt Debbie is the ONLY person who would be in her driveway, who has a red SUV. I was at the house around that time and noticed that someone had taken some boxes of my brother’s stuff from the house, that he left behind the night I caught him and his wife removing items off the property. I assumed my aunt Debbie, thinking she was the named executor of my mom’s will, thought she could remove the items from the property, and I couldn’t say shit to her about it. The reality was though, while she was the named executor, she hadn’t been appointed by the courts yet, and so legally she had no authority to do so. I wrote her an email letting her know that she was seen at the house removing items, and I reminded her that she hadn’t been appointed yet and shouldn’t be removing items from the property. I had tried to peacefully and amicably reach out to her in the weeks following my mom’s death,  and she refused to respond to me. Of course once she was being accused of something, she answered right away. She denied being there, and so when I responded, I kept it very short. I told her that if it wasn’t her, I apologize, and that I should probably contact the police and have them look into it since, I don’t know anyone else with a red SUV who’d be at my mom’s home. She responded back, “Good idea.(that I call the police)”, and that was it…..or so I thought. A day or so later I got this lengthy, “how dare you”, ” I would never do that”, “I am insulted”, bullshit, argumentative email. She didn’t get the rise out of me that she was hoping for, the first time, and so she got angry and wrote me an inflammatory, email. I never responded to that last one. There was no need. It was just bait to try to suck me in so she could further antagonize me and argue with me. I refused to give her what she wanted. Don’t take the bait, my friends! 

 
  
Tip #8 STOP FEELING GUILTY! 

Ok so this one isn’t so much a tip for dealing with them, but it’s something to consider….I grew up in an Italian- American family that preached “family first”, “family always sticks together” and “unconditional love”, but I’ve realized in the past year that they don’t practice what they preach. I’ve also learned in the last few years that, that way of thinking is completely unhealthy. If someone is disrespecting you, crossing your boundaries and/or treating you badly, it doesn’t matter who they are, or how you know them, if they’re treating you like shit, they gotta go! You don’t have to take ANYONE’S abuse. You also don’t have to feel guilty for making decisions that are best for your life. 
Going no contact is not easy and especially so when you are doing it with your family. Trust me, I know this. I held onto my family for the past ten years. I felt resentful towards them. I couldn’t understand how they could stand behind someone who perpetrated a crime against another member of the family. I stuck it out and tried to forgive people because I wanted to respect my mother. My aunt Bea saved my mom’s life by donating her kidney to her, and so I felt obligated to be there for her when her son molested my younger cousin. I will always admire what she did for my mom, but I realize now that it didn’t give her a pass to treat me or my mom like shit. I didn’t ask her to do that for my mom. That was her choice in life, not mine. She did that for my mom, not for me. I don’t owe her anything. I am not obligated to do anything for her, and quite frankly, she has some nerve being angry with me about “outing” her son. I didn’t ask him to molest my cousin. She will deny, deny, deny, that she has any resentment towards me but her actions speak louder than her words.

As much as I know it would upset my mom, cutting half of my extend family and my brother, out of my life, I know my mom would want me to do what’s best for me. If she could see all that they’ve been doing for the past four months since she died, I think she’d understand. You cannot feel guilty for cutting toxic people from your life……Period. 
I hope this has helped 

The Aftermath/Present Day

So we have finally made to present day! It’s now April of 2017. There’s been plenty of shit going down in the past few months but it’s been a lot more spread out, and so as I go along I will reflect on some of it and I’m going to start explaining what’s going on now and where things are between my brother, Satan, my Aunt Debbie and aunt Bea. 
In the next few posts I want to basically give you my thoughts about everything that was going on in the last month of my mom’s life and how it correlates to what is going on now, because as everything was happening, I was very confused. As I have had time to reflect on it all, I’ve been able to gain perspective and a little bit of a better understanding as to why my brother and Satan were going so crazy and doing all this stupid bullshit. It’s mostly speculation but speculation that fits really will with what was happening and makes it make sense. 
I should probably go back to March of 2016, after my mom had her surgery to remove the 8″ cancerous mass that was growing on her left kidney. Up until Early march of 2016, my brother and Satan were absolutely no help to my mom. They didn’t even really seemed very concerned about her condition, whatsoever. When my mom had her surgery back on February 10th, they only had come to the hospital one time that I can recall. It was the day that my mom had the surgery. My brother called me at 4:30 in the afternoon, after not hearing from him all day and the first thing he asks me is if she got a room because him and Satan want to send flowers. They may have come up one other time but that was it for her entire 7 day stay. Once she got home on February 17, they still did nothing. They didn’t come by or help her at all. For the next 6 weeks I was at her house daily. When she first got home from the hospital I had to go there every night to help get her in and out of bed. They never called or offered help. Then suddenly one day in late March, things changed. My aunt Sue had researched one of the best cancer hospitals in the US and suggested to me that my mom should sought out a second opinion. I agreed but I didn’t think my mom was ready for that yet. The second opinion was far away and since I was the one taking my mom for her weekly blood tests and doctors appointments, and seeing how she could hardly tolerate he short car rides we had, I thought it would be best if we waited a few more weeks until she got a little of her strength back. 
I guess my family thought I wasn’t taking my mom’s illness seriously, but by this time I already knew that my mom had a rare and aggressive form of kindness cancer that had advanced to her lymphatic system and god knew where else. I knew it wasn’t good. I did a little reading about kidney cancer in transplant patients, who took immunosuppressive drugs and the outlook was grim at best. That wasn’t to say I didn’t think she needed to get a second opinion. I didn’t think one would hurt but I also didn’t think it was a big rush since her doctors had explained to me that even the most aggressive cancers have a growth rate of one centimeter per year. 
They all seemed to think that it was crazy that my mom’s doctors told her to wait three months, after her surgery to go for follow up scans to see if the cancer had grown. They need to allow some time to pass to figure out how fast it was growing. Three months is actually too soon according to some doctors that I have spoke with. The standard is 6 months. Anyway, my mom’s cousin, Lenore’s daughter, worked at the other hospital that my aunt Sue had researched, and so when Aunt Bea caught wind of the situation and reached out to her to answer some questions. When she shared the email back, she CC’d me, Aunt Debbie and Aunt Sue but she sent my brother his own private email. I had not informed my brother about the second opinion for two reasons. One being that I didn’t think my mom was ready, and two being that he didn’t not seem to want to take an active role in helping my mom and/or caring for her. I had been trying to communicate with him prior to my mom’s surgery but every time I’d reach out to him, he wouldn’t answer and instead he’d either call my mom or Aunt Debbie to find out what was going on.
I do know that during that very same time the email was sent to my brother, a phone call between my aunt Bea and Satan happened. It seemed like the second after that phone call happened, my brother and Satan suddenly wanted to not only take a more active role in my mom’s care, but they wanted to lead the way. My brother completely took the reins on the second opinion stuff and I was totally fine with it however I couldn’t help but feel like something was said to them to light the fire under their asses. I had been trying to convey to my brother how serious my mom’s situation was and until then, he didn’t seem to care. My brother is the type of person, and I hate to say this, but he only does things for other people when there is a benefit in it for him. In this case I strongly believe that Aunt Bea informed Satan and my brother that my mom was either looking to take him off her will as executor and/or take him off altogether. 
For years my mom was under the impression that her will had my brother listed as the executor. Till this day, I’m not really sure why she thought that. I am not kidding when I say that every single person she talked to (friends, family, etc.) she told them that she needed to change her will to take my brother off as executor and put me on. When I informed her that my Aunt Bea and Aunt Debbie were on the will as executors and all other paperwork,(healthcare proxy, power of attorney) she just said, “oh.”. I actually happen to have me telling her that on a recording because I told her about it after our meeting with the palliative care team when she was in the hospital. I started to record all of our meetings with doctors and such about a month or so before she died because there was a lot of information, to remember. I told her about the will right after the meeting because power of attorney and wills came up during that meeting (because my brother of course brought it up) After I informed her of who was on her will, I didn’t press the issue any further because she was having a really rough day in the hospital and so I never found out why she had thought my brother was the executor. The only thing I could think of is that she maybe, since the will was written in 1996 when my brother and I were still minors, had it written where if my brother was still a minor, it would be my aunts, but if he wasn’t, it would be him. I believe had she had another will it would’ve been in the safe with the old ones and really, she probably would’ve thrown the old ones out. If there is indeed another will somewhere, I have no idea where it is. My mom used to keep the combination to our safe in a book. Behind that book, I found a handwritten note from my mom that told us her will was in the safe. 
With that said, I found out months later, after her death, that when aunt Debbie was telling people that I destroyed my mom’s will, she was talking about the imaginary will that named my brother as executor. I was totally confused as to why she was saying I destroyed my mom’s will and so I sent her a photo of the copy I had to prove to her I had the copy. At that time I had believed that she was talking about the 1996 will because my brother and Satan accused me of stealing the original copy of it. I also later found out that Satan was the one who started the rumor about the other will. Funny because my brother discussed the will several times with my husband and never once did he make any mention of any other will that named him as executor. That’s because he knew if he did my husband would call his bluff and tell him he’s a fucking liar. 
I am completely insulted that anyone in my family would believe I’d do such a thing. I thought my family knew I had integrity and they knew what type of person I was. Besides I don’t see how me ripping up a will that names him and using a will that names two other people I dislike is going to help me! I’ll be the first to admit that I really don’t understand why my brother feels so god damned entitled that he should be executor just because why? Because he is older? I personally feel like he lost that privilege when he dumped my mom off the minute she didn’t comply with his wife’s ridiculous wedding demands. For nearly three years he dismissed her feelings, fought with her, and let his wife talk to her like she was a heap of dog shit on the sidewalk. He didn’t go to her house for an entire two years except for maybe one or two brief visits to pick up a piece of mail that was sent to her accidentally and his comic books. That’s it. Then when she got sick, he did nothing for months and only decided to jump in when his wife finally decided that my mom was an investment for her. So yes I don’t feel like my brother deserves to be in charge of my mom’s possessions. At the end of the day though, those are MY feelings. Had my mom chose him, I would’ve just had to deal with it and that’s it. He is part owner of everything she left us. My mom loved him unconditionally which is the same way I will love my son. 
After I submitted my mom’s will I never heard back from my aunts. I reached out several times and got nothing. I offered to have a peaceful conversation with them but they refused to speak with me and so I was left with no choice but to consult with my lawyer and see what my options were. It was CLEAR that they weren’t going to treat me fairly. That I was going to be left in the dark regarding my mom’s estate because they too have been sucked into Satan’s web. My attorney filed the will on December 13, 2017. It took my aunts all the way until February 10th to file their petitions. My lawyers filed my objection to the will shortly after that. I was objecting to my aunt’s being the executors. Shortly before my mom died she had a lawyer come up to the hospital and she told the lawyer she wanted to name both me and my brother as executors. As I know, that was her dying wish and so I entered an objection to my aunts being executors. My brother and I are grown adults now. We do not need them. 
My aunts are still going on about the “other will”. There is no “other will” and if there was, they’ve made absolutely no attempt to find it. Just as my lawyer did, their lawyer should’ve informed them that the lawyer should have a copy of the will. Aunt Debbie used the lawyer who drafted my mom’s will and handled her malpractice law suit with her doctor, to do her first divorce. Her and my mom discussed everything because they spoke every single day since my dad died in 2006. They even discussed their wills and I know this for a fact because aunt Debbie told me. She knows for damn sure. She’s a fucking liar; going along with this shit. There never was another will. 

Recently I’ve been informed that my mom alledegdly had a new will written right before she bought her most recent car. That is according to aunt Debbie. I do not believe that; AT ALL. I loved my mom,  but she was very cheap when it came to certain things. For three years she talked about having her will changed but she never did it because it was going to cost her a couple hundred dollars and so I find it really hard to believe that for no reason whatsoever, my mom just decided out of the clear blue sky to have her will written three years ago which would’ve been on or around the time my brother started dating Satan. If any time I’d believe she’d do it, it would’ve been right after my dad died in 2006. I don’t see my. Ok randomly wanting to spend a couple of hundred dollars just to get a will written. 
The sick part is, I think some of my family actually believes this bullshit. There is absolutely NO WAY, I can prove it isn’t true. My aunt Sue suggested that I go through banks statements from that time and see if there are any checks or transactions with a lawyer. That still wouldn’t prove shit. Me finding a transaction wouldn’t prove them right. That wouldn’t prove that I destroyed the will. For all I know my mom herself could’ve destroyed it. Maybe that was her way of getting my brother off the will. I’d still question why she’d keep the old ones if there was a new one written. 
I did go through her bank statements for that time period and I didn’t find any checks or transactions for a lawyer. That doesn’t mean they didn’t happen. She could’ve paid with a credit card or in cash. I don’t know. I don’t know why I’m even bothering or worrying about it. I know she didn’t have it re-written for the sheer fact that she would’ve told me she did. 
If my aunts and my brother really believe there was another will, why aren’t they actively looking for it? Why did my brother file for administration at the very beginning? Why doesn’t my aunt Debbie know who wrote it? Why hasn’t my brother ever said anything to me or my husband about it? I actually gave both her and my brother the phone number to the woman who sent me the will. Since they’re still all about this other will, I assume they never called her or reached out to her in anyway. Why? Because they know there never was another will.

The First Christmas

The first Christmas after you lose a part of your family, is the hardest one. By the time Christmas rolled around I think I was still in a state of shock and possibly a little bit of denial that my mom was gone. I knew I just had to get through it for the sake of my son. This was the first year that he was really excited and understood what was going on. I didn’t want to ruin it for him. I know my mom would’ve told me to try my hardest to give him a good Christmas and so, for another few weeks, I put out of my mind what had happened.
Since my brother and Satan were in such a rush to get my mom’s money, I had a check in my hand exactly one week after she died. I remember opening the envelope and crying. When I finally went to the bank to cash it, I cried. When I went shopping for my son for Christmas, I looked in the back of my car at all the gifts and again, I cried. My mom spoiled the hell out of son, and so I went a little extra this past Christmas. I went onto her phone one day and looked in her amazon app and ordered all the things she had saved in her favorites that she was going to order for him and I told him that it was from her.
My mom always made Christmas so special for us. It would take us an entire weekend to get our house decorated. I remember we’d replace almost everything on any type of surface in my house with Christmas stuff. Half our attic was filled exclusively with Christmas stuff. My mom used to really enjoy it when we were kids. I then thought about the last few Christmas’s. The year 2013 was the first Christmas after my brother had met Satan. That Christmas took place only a few weeks after they had their first huge blowout. It was a sad year. It was also the first year in our entire lives that we didn’t spend all together. For 6 years prior to then, we spent our Christmases with my brother’s ex-fiance’s mom, Donna and her husband. We had a whole tradition going. We’d all go to my brother’s apartment in the morning for breakfast. There we’d exchange gifts. Donna would make us all laugh because she’s come with this huge bag for my brother’s ex, filled with random things she had been collecting over the year. Donna had a bit of a shopping addiction which also lead to a hoarding problem. It was a rip to watch them discuss each and every item and why she got it. To go from that to just me, my, mom, my husband and my son. It was sad. My mom hadn’t seen my brother the following two Christmas’s. Because those two assholes refused to make amends, her last Christmas ever, in 2015, she had to spend it separately. She came to my house Christmas Day and then saw them the day after, but her visit with them was cut short when I called her and told her she needed to go to the emergency room. 
Even though it was great seeing my son open all of his toys, it was bittersweet. Not calling my mom in the morning was odd. Knowing we wouldn’t be seeing her that day, felt really strange. It was surreal. My moms youngest sister Dana called me up a few weeks before Christmas and told me that she’d like to have us over. That was a big help and I’m so thankful she invited us. My Aunt Dana and I have a special bond. When everything went down in my family after Aunt Bea and Uncle Bob’s son molested my younger cousin, I felt like I was living in the twilight zone. I couldn’t for the life of me understand why my other aunts and uncles were so accepting and forgiving towards my cousin, when he had committed one of the most horrifying acts a person could commit, and nonetheless, to another family member. Aunt Dana was the ONLY person who seemed to agree with me that it was so fucked up. Her and I would spend hours on the phone talking about it. She was the only person in my family that understood how I felt. 
It wasn’t until my son’s birthday, which is New Year’s Eve, that my mom’s death really hit me. Not only did it hit me, but it hit me like a hurricane. For the weeks following my mom’s death I was in fight or flight mode still. I had suppressed my feelings. Grief is a really fucked up and complicated emotion. After you spend an entire year slowly watching someone die, it sounds terrible, but you almost have this strange sense of relief. I was not relieved that my mom was gone, not at all. I was relieved because I didn’t have to watch her suffering anymore. I’ve heard people say that it’s “easier” when you know that someone is going die before they actually do. I have to disagree. I think they’re equally as bad, but I have been through both and I can say knowing definitely does not make it easier because in the months, weeks and days until it happens, you are in a constant state of anxiousness. Your worry consumes you. You feel despair and helplessness as you slowly watch their health decline and their bodies give upon them. The torture of seeing someone you love like that is worse than any torture ISiS can conjure up. It’s not easy, either way you put it. 
As 2016 came to an endI had absolutely no desire to do anything. My husband and I both sat on our couch waiting for the ball to drop. We counted down, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, and when the ball dropped, we both just kind of sat there and said a very unenthusiastic, yey. We looked at each other and I said, “fuck You 2016…..you were the worst year of my life.”
(The end of the back story)

Busted!!

It had now been nearly month since my mom had passed away. For over a year now, my husband and I had been talking about leasing a new truck. My car payment was up in March 2017 and so my husband thought up this idea that he’d take my car and we’d lease a new truck for me to be used as a family car. He had scoped out the car, and so one night while I was out, I decided to go take it for a test drive. I had just left the dealership when I get a text from my mom’s neighbor telling me that Satan’s car was at my mom’s house and she was carrying out boxes and putting them in the back of her car. She told me she didn’t see my brother and so as soon as I got the text, I immediately started heading to the house. If it was justSatan  in the house when I got there, there was going to be a huge fucking problem. The last time I spoke to my brother, when I confronted him about the emails I saw on my mom’s phone, he flat out told me that I should NOT be taking anything from the house until the will was settled. Now here was his wife carrying boxes out of my mom’s house. That’s a little fucked up for them to say. 
I was just about on the expressway when I got the text, and so I gunned it past the next four exits, heading to my mom’s house. I had been trying to catch them there for months now, but I was always too late. I called my husband up and was on the phone with him until I pulled up to the house. Finally, I saw their truck in the driveway. My husband told me to pull behind Satan to block her in because if she was indeed alone there, she was trespassing and stealing. I parked my car parallel to the street, blocking the driveway. 
I sat there in my car for a few second and tried to scope out the situation, but I couldn’t really see much, so I got out of my car and slowly walked up to the house. As I got up to the house, I see my brother walking by the big picture window in the living room. I walked up to the front door and try to open it but the door was locked. I grabbed my keys and quietly unlocked the door. I walked in to see two rows of garbage bags, lined up, stretching across my mom’s living room. There had to be at least 16 bags in there, full of what, I didn’t know. 
I can hear the noise of packing tape being torn off the roll and so I followed the sound to this small home office that my dad had built years ago, when he owned his own business. He split up our garage and made the one half his office and the other a small garage area for storage. I walked up and leaned against the door frame with my hand on my hip and said, “Oh hey, what are you guys doing here?”. My brother answered my question with the very same question for me. I replied with, “oh I was just in the neighborhood and decided to stop in…….so what are you doing here?”. First he claimed to had been there to clean out the food from the fridge and stuff. I looked over to see Satan standing there, holding the baby and nervously pacing back and forth. I knew she was biting her tongue. Next to her were two piles of boxes stacked almost as high as her head. I then said to my brother, “Well what are you putting in these boxes then?” and at that moment he snapped back and told me that he was, “taking all of his old toys and stuff from the attic.”. Again I looked over at the boxes next to Satan and next to the two piles was my mom’s Christmas tree. When I finally moved out, to live with my husband, my mom had stopped putting up her big tree. Instead, she brought this 3-4ft tall fiber optic Christmas tree. My brother hated that thing. I knew he wasn’t the one who decided to take it and so I asked him, “oh, so is that Christmas tree one of your old toys?”. That’s when he really got pissed and told my to “mind my own fucking business” and that he can, take whatever the fuck he wants.”. I looked at him and told him that he was a money hungry, greedy piece of shit and I reminded him how he told me not to take anything from the house. Before he could even answer, Satan jumped in and says to him, “Don’t talk to her anymore, she’s crazy!”, and that was when I completely lost my shit! 
It had been three years in the making. Over the past three years I had only gotten into exactly ONE verbal confrontation with her, and that was when she showed up at my house, unexpectedly at 10:00 at night. The last few years,  but especially the last two months, came flying out of me in the most vile of ways. I yelled at her, “Shut your fucking mouth you dumb fucking twat! You dumb fucking twat, shut the fuck up!”. I think I called her every nasty name my imagination could conjour up. Finally, my brother told me to leave and I snapped back, “I’m not fucking going anywhere! I have just as much of a right to be here as you. I’ll sit right the fuck down and put my feet up on the coffee table.”. That’s when I heard Satan say, “I’m calling the cops.”. I walked back in the room and shouted, “Good! Go ahead and call the cops because you’re only going to make yourself look like a fucking idiot, because you are trespassing on the property!”. “As a matter of fact…”, I said, “I’ll call the cops too.”. I dialed 911, but I was bluffing, or so I thought, I wanted to see if she actually called them first but as I said it I accidentally hit the call button on my phone. A few seconds later I heard a voice and hung up. Then moments after that I get a call back from 911. I answer the phone and tell the officer what’s going on.
I walked through the house which had random items scattered all over the place. As I talked to the dispatcher I decided it would probably be best if I just waited outside until the cops came. I didn’t want to scare my brothers 18 month old kid anymore. The sad part is, the kid didn’t seem the least bit upset or scared with all the yelling. It must be a normal occurrence in their home, and she’s been desensitized to it. 
I was outside for all of about two minutes when suddenly I hear the front door flying open. I look up and out comes Satan with the baby in her arms and she walks down the porch steps and says to me, “you need to move your car.”. As I watch her walk by, I turned and told her, “I’m not moving shit! You called the cops and now you’re going to wait until they get here.”. She huffed and puffed her way to the car and put the baby in her car seat. My brother followed a few seconds later. 
As my brother walked by I asked him why he went to a lawyer and lied about my mom having a will. He didn’t answer and so I asked again. Finally he turned around and said, “because you stole the will!”. I told him, “no you fucking asshole, I never had the will. I had to get it from the lawyer and I have the letter and the envelope to prove it.”. That’s when he said one of the most fucked up accusations of all, that I forged a document. When the lawyer sent me both of my parents’ wills, he also sent a cover letter that said he sent the wills at my request, and he dated and signed the letter. My brother was accusing me of forging the letter! If I was going to take my chances forging the letter, why wouldn’t I forge the entire will then and leave all the money to myself?! I never heard such stupid bullshit in my life but I was really fucking angry. My brother has known me my whole life and knows what kind of person I am. I don’t know who made up this psychotic version of me but I have my guesses. 
He walked back into the house briefly and came back out. In that time I had pulled up a photo of the letter and I showed it to him and asked, “This? You think I forged this?”. You have to be fucking kidding me…. I have the fedex envelope at home, I can prove it to you.”. He looked up and dead into my eyes and said, “I don’t believe you!”. I yelled back, “you are so fucked up! What happened to you?”, and then I asked, “where’s your integrity?”. 
The whole time all of this is going on, their kid is sitting in the car in the complete darkness. They didn’t even bother to start the car. It was December 17th and it was freezing that night. There was about an inch of snow covering the ground. Despite that though, Satan was walking around in this sleeveless, shirt with ruffles on the shoulders, like it was the middle of July! I guess when you’re cold blooded the winter doesn’t bother you as much? 
At this point there was so much commotion, my mom’s neighbors slowly started coming outside to see what was going on. My brother  and Satan are in and out of the house carrying things back and forth. Him and Satan are trying to lock me out of the house and it got ugly. At one point, my brother and I got into a screaming match, right on the front porch. Satan is trying to lock me out the house, but I pulled the door back open. She sticks her head up and started yelling in my face, “I will have you arrested and locked away for a long time!”, like she’s the sheriffs daughter or something.  “I told her to shut the fuck up!”. More of her psychotic threats. My brother is about 2 inches away from my face with his fist clenched and his arm up and cocked back in the air like he’s going to hit me. Satan yells out, “don’t hit her! That’s what she came here for.” 
Let’s just let that soak in for a second. I think that last statement is a testament to how truly fucked up her mind is. Why on earth would I come there with the sole purpose of having my brother punch me in the face? My mind would never Think that way. Obviously since she is the one who said it, that’s the way her mind operates. I’m not into setting people up like that. Only a psychopath wound think of or do such a thing.
As my brother is holding up his fist I was screaming, “go ahead, hit me! Hit me!”. I knew he wouldn’t. Suddenly without any notice Satan come out of the door and fully launches herself between me and my brother. My instincts kicked in and as she came towards me, with the back of my arms, I shoved her. I am not exaggerating when I say the very second my arm came into contact with her body, she flew back a second and started screaming, “She hit me! I’m pressing charges!”. I swear over my son, she then took her hand and lifted up the ruffles on her shirt saying that I left marks while trying to scratch herself so there were visible marks! She did it several times! I watched her. I couldn’t even believe what I was seeing! If nothing else in this blog has convinced you that this girl is a full fledged psychopath, this should! 
Things escalated so quickly that I cannot remember every detail in its exact order, but I do remember at some point I asked them which one of them stole the pain killers. They both looked like two deers caught in the headlights. Neither of them denied it. They just told me I was crazy (deflection). Had they not taken them they would’ve probably said something like, “what pills?”, or “where were there pain killers?”. I also asked them the million dollar question, a question a have asked my brother SEVERAL times since my mom’s passing, “where were you when she was alive?”. Neither of them ever answer that question when it’s posed, and sometimes it’s the lack of an answer that tells you everything you need to know. 
Things cooled down a bit after the screaming match on the front porch. My brother and Satan went back into the house and I stayed outside. I stood there smoking a cigarette, pacing up and down my mom’s walkway. I could see my brother and Satan standing in my mom’s living room just a few feet away from the large window. Satan is frantically going through her phone, dialing numbers and putting the phone up to her ear. My brother was just standing there still, staring off into space with this look on his face like he was thinking, “this is not good!”. I really do wonder at times if my brother realizes how much he has let this girl fuck up his life. I also wonder if he’s even upset that my mom passed or that him and I no longer have a relationship. Sometimes I wonder if there is any part of the brother I once knew, in existence. 
My husband called as I was standing out there and I had explained everything that had happened up until that point. Suddenly I hear the door opening behind me and out comes Satan and a few seconds later, my brother. Satan walks right past me and gets into her car. I’m giving my husband the play by play, “oh here they come now, they’re getting in the car! She’s starting the car……where the fuck are they going? They called the cops!…….oh she is putting her seatbelt on…..what the fuck?…… she’s backing up!…….she better not hit my car!…….what is this crazy bitch doing?……she better not hit my car ……..she’s going into drive……where the fuck is she going?….she’s…..holy shit! She’s…..she fucking driving across my mom’s front lawn! HOLY SHIT!!!!!

Yes, this crazy bitch some how did some Austin Powers maneuver and managed to get her car which was parked, sandwiched behind behind my mom’s and mine, and she fucking drove across the lawn! She then peeled out into the street and drove out of sight. God blessed us with snow that night so I could capture a nice photo of the tire tracks going across the lawn. 

By this point in time all of the neighbors are outside and they’re all just standing there completely dumbfounded, and then one says, “What the fuck was that all about?”. I yell back across the street, “you got me!”. 
She wasn’t even gone a minute and finally the police officer arrives. He opens his window and asks, what’s going on. I turned around and pointed to the tire tracks on my mom’s front lawn and said, “well for starters, that’s what’s going on.”. Some of the neighbors crept over and listened in as I explained the situation to the cop. As I’m talking, I suddenly hear what sounds like a car skidding out. I look down to the end of the block and see Satan stopped on the middle of the road that crosses over my mom’s street. She throws the car in reverse and turns down the block with her tires screeching the whole way. She pulls over and her and my brother come out of the car all calm and collected like nothing has happened and they start explaining their side of the story, of course making themselves seem like the innocent victims. 
The cop was kind of an asshole and didn’t seem like he even wanted to be bothered with this situation. Satan was doing all of the talking, explaining how she talked to the “executors”, (aunt Bea and Aunt Debbie) and they said that they could take whatever the fuck the wanted, but all they were taking was my brother’s old Star Wars figures from the attic. I explained to the cop how they told me not to remove any items from the house and then they are there doing exactly that. I also explained how no executors had been appointed yet and so no one should be telling them to take anything. The cops then asks me if I really care that my brother is taking his stuff from the house and I explained to him that he was taking more stuff than what was his and that I couldn’t see what was in the boxes. The cop asks e if I care that he’s taking “his” stuff. I said no, but I argued back that if we go that route, I can say that anything in the house is “my stuff” and that I can take it. Technically ifits in her house it’s her property. I also told him that his wife shouldn’t be in there taking anything either because it’s not her mother’s house. I think he kind of understood at that point and so he told us we should all just lock up the house and leave. My brother asked if he could go back in the house to clean up and bring the garbage bags out and so the cop said ok, but only him. I stood out there and explained to the cop that I was sorry for being so agitated and hostile. I explained  that they were never around when my mom was alive, but that they now had no problem going through all of her stuff. Satan then walked back over and starts going on again about how I left marks on her. She was walking over to the car with her arm out, trying to show the cop the invisible marks on her arms. I looked down and told her they were freckles and that she needed to look in a mirror. She started going on about how she was going to go down to the precinct and press charges on me. She must be a professional at falsely accusing people of shit since she knew that you must go down to the precinct to do so. The cop turned to her and said, “That shit ain’t gonna fly here honey, just go sit in your car and wait.”. She walks away mumbling some shit about me being crazy and needing to be medicated and so I asked her, “oh you mean like the medication you stole from my mom?”. She finally turned around and threw her hands up and said, “I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”. That’s another one of her favorite lines when she’s confront by something that’s irrefutable. 
Finally I realized the cop was going to be no help and so I asked him if I could just leave. I pulled down the block into the convenience store parking lot and waited. I was going to go in the house after they left to see what they took. That’s when I noticed another set of headlights coming down the block and stopping in front of my mom’s house. After a minute, I realized that it was my husband and so I pulled down the block again and got out. My husband later told me that as soon he got out of the car, Satan came running up to him with her arm out yelling, “look what your wife did to me!”. She was telling my husband that she was going to press charges and my husband said to her, “Satan, please stop. You want to go press charges, go ahead because my wife can g press charges because you are trespassing on the property.”. My brother jumped in to remind my husband that she was his wife, (which he also said to me when I pointed out the same thing) but the cop interjected by saying, “you should listen to your brother in law, (my husband) he’s right.”. My husband told them that He and Satan should step aside and let me brother and I handle things, but Satan wouldn’t allow it. He told them how ridiculous this whole thing was And a conversation started about the will and how my brother thought I had it and we thought he had it. My brother started explaining how they tried to contact the lawyer who drafted the will, but before he could finish, Satan jumped in and said, “don’t tell him anything.”. With that, she grabbed my brother’s arm and they got in the car and they left. That was the last time I saw or spoke with my brother. 



A “painful” discovery…

Time was passing me by and Christmas was right around the corner. I was so busy trying to play catch up and figure out what my brother and his wife were up to that I felt like it was not completely hitting me that my mom was gone. It felt like she was just away for a little bit and would be back shortly. I had to go back to her house 
I was really in no mood to celebrate Christmas. Usually I am decking the halls like Clark Griswold but this year I felt as if I just didn’t have it in me to go all out. I remember the first Christmas without my dad. I was still living at home with my mom at the time. My mom was really down that year and she didn’t want to put up a tree or anything. I pushed her that year and made her do it. I remember feeling like this, and recently someone who also lost their father at a young age; said the same thing to me. I hated seeing my mom so down and sad, that all I wanted to do was just fix her. At times if she started getting down or talking about how sad she was about my dad I’d just shut her down. Not because I didn’t want her to talk about him, but because I couldn’t take seeing her so sad. This year though I understood. My grief over my dad was much different than the grief I have over my mom. A large factor in that is the relationships I had with them. My dad and I didn’t have the best relationship throughout my life. I didn’t like the way he treated me and my brother, and especially didn’t care for how he treated my mom. He was a hard person to get along with at times. It wasn’t until the last few years of his life that we started to get along better and have a better understanding of one another. On the other hand, my mom and I were best friends and so her death has way more of an impact on me. 
Anyhow, I knew I couldn’t just completely ignore the fact that Christmas was coming because I did have my three year old son, who was about to turn four. It was the first year he was really excited and aware of what was going on. I could hear my mom in my head telling me in my head to get it together for my son. Somehow I was able to push my grief aside and make his Christmas the most special Christmas ever. Even though he didn’t exactly understand what was going on, he was definitely able to sense that something in our household was different and he knew my mom wasn’t around anymore but he didn’t get why, or where she went. I didn’t want my sadness to mess up the joy of Christmas for him and so I decided to put up our decorations. I even made a special tree and dedicated it to my mom. 
A few months before she passed my mom had purchased, what I like to refer to as “lazy lights”. They’re those Star Shower LED, Xmas light projectors, that make your house look like the grizwold house with about 1/100th of the effort! She ordered one and when I saw it our her house I told her I wanted to get one too, and so a few weeks later she ordered one for me as well. I had remembered seeing the boxes neatly stacked in the corner of her room the day after she passed when I was cleaning off all the papers and junk mail that my brother and Satan had carelessly piled on her dresser, in an effort to help (???) clean.
Going back to before all this crap happened with the will, going back to thanksgiving I took a ride to her house that night to clean out the rest of the left over food from her fridge and I figured I would get the lights while I was there. I went into her room and grabbed the boxes out of the corner of her room. Before I could grab the boxes, I had to move some stuff out of the way. One of the things I had to move was a small plastic food container that my mom used to store pill boxes and over stock of her medication. I had placed that box on top of the Star Shower boxes, the day before her wake, as I was cleaning it off her dresser. When I went to move the container, I noticed there was a little, round white pill sitting on the lid. I thought nothing of it. I opened up the container and noticed that she had only one pill bottle in there and the rest were empty pill cases. I opened the bottle and looked inside it to see that it was at least halfway filled with pills that were identical to the one I found, and so I dropped the loose pill in there and closed the bottle. I looked at the label and realized it was the hydrocodone (either Vicodin or Percocet) that I had picked up for her just a week prior to her going into the hospital. I had figured my mom left it there the day I brought her to the emergency room. It made me sad because I remembered that day. I told her to take a pain killer before we headed to the hospital because I had this feeling that it would be hours and hours, before we saw a doctor. I told her to take a few extra with us just in case it wore off as we were waiting. My mom was In pretty bad shape that day and so I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if my mom left one out like that. All I knew is that I was glad I found it before my son did. 
That night I also saw my mom’s neighbor and we ended up talking and so I went back a day or so later to clean out the rest of the food from the other fridge. I had heard from the neighbor that my brother had also been at the house earlier that same day. I cleaned the rest of the catering trays up and before I left I decided to use the bathroom. As I was sitting there on the toilet (TMI I know) I glanced over at my mom’s bathroom counter. I loved my mom’s bathroom. She had just had it completely renovated and updated a few years ago. She did such a good job picking out all the tiles and fixtures and every time I was in there I would just admire all of it. I remember she was so stressed during that project. It was probably the biggest project she had done in the house after my dad had passed. Our old bathroom was a 1980’s wood paneled nightmare, with there ugly mauve colored, ceramic tiles. I mean the entire room was paneled, even the ceiling! Anyway, one of my favorite features of the renovated bathroom was the sink and counter top. It was white marble with grayish swirls in it. As I sat there and skimmed it over, I noticed this tiny blue, rock like thing sitting on the counter. I picked it up and inspected it and noticed that it was a small piece of a pill. It looked at if the pill had been broken in half once and then broken in half again. The part I found was only half or a half but there was part of number inscribed on it and it read 15. I picked up my phone and googled “Small round blue pill with……” and as I started typing, google automatically filled the the rest of the info which was “small round blue pill with R 215”. I click on the images and see tons of photos of pills that are identical to the one had just found. The letters, shade of blue and everything matched the pill exactly. It turns out it was a Roxicodone. Apparently Roxicodone is a very powerful pain killer, much more powerful than the one I had found of my mom’s a few days prior. I had to wonder who’s it was and I could only come to one conclusion, maybe two, My brother and Satan. 
I text the photo of it to my mom’s youngest sister, Dana who was the only sister of hers that I was able to talk to on a real level, and asked her if she thinks it could’ve been left by anyone who came to the house between my mom’s viewings. Any of the people either of us would’ve suspected of using that shit, was not at the house either of the days and so that further drove home the idea that it was either Satan’s or my brother’s. After the last day of my mom’s wake Dana, her husband, my uncle Tony, my cousin Nikki and her husband all came back to my mom’s house after the wake and helped me clean up. We hung out an bullshitted for a little bit too and I filed my Aunt Dana in on all the crazy shit that was going on during the last few months of my mom’s life. Both Aunt Dana and my cousin Nikki agree that at least one of us would’ve spotted that blue pill in the bathroom that night or at some point during that day. My aunt Dana said she most definitely would’ve seen it had it been there that night because she had picked up one of my mom’s perfume bottles, and smelled it.

The only person who could’ve left it there was my brother. 
My mom’s neighbor was keeping an eye on the house for me and a few days later she had spotted my brother there one night. She told me he was alone and that she had witnessed him carrying boxes out to his car and putting them in his trunk. He had been there quite a few times in the first week or two after my mom passed and I was starting to get suspicious that he was taking things out of the house. I had been trying to catch them in the act since my mom was in the hospital but every time I got there, they’d be gone. 
I headed over to my mom’s house that night and I was on the phone with my cousin Nikki. I walked around the house looking around but I didn’t notice anything missing. I know my brother had taken some stuff the first few times he was there. He took her wireless router and all of our home videos that were on VHS Tapes. This time however there was nothing missing that I noticed. As I walked around the house me and Nikki were speculating as to what he was doing there, I walked through the bathroom, and into my mom’s room and I had reminded Nikki about the painkiller I had found a few days earlier on the bathroom counter and as a joke, Nikki asked me if my mom had any painkillers in the house. Suddenly, I remembered the other pill I found when I came do pick up the Christmas lights. I told her about it and she’s like, “maybe that’s it! Maybe they took those!”. I walked over to the corner of the room where I had put the plastic container with the pills and opened it up. I was totally expecting them to still be in there, but when I opened the bottle they were ALL gone! I couldn’t fucking believe it! 
Talk about divine intervention! Had my mom not ordered me one of those star showers, I never would’ve picked up that box. Had one of the pills not been on the cover, I never would’ve opened the container or looked in that pill bottle therefore I would’ve had no idea of anything was missing from it! Even finding the small piece of a pill on the counter, had I have never found it I never would’ve even thought to look in there again. I do believe in spirit guides and things of that nature and whomever my spirit guide is, they made sure I found that. 
The next day I headed back to the house because I had to pay the neighbor who had watched my mom’s dogs. Thank god, she decided to adopt them both. I couldn’t take them to my house because I have a big dog who would pester them, and they are senior dogs. They don’t need my big dope messing with them. It was a big worry for me. I couldn’t see my brother taking the dogs in because Satan doesn’t like dogs (she really is the devil) and the thought of giving them to a stranger just didn’t fit right with me. I kind my mom would’ve been happy to know she took them in.
While she was there, I told her about the whole story with the pills and how I came to discover them. As I told her the story, I brought her into my mom’s room to show her where the pill box was and how someone really had to be looking for them. I also pointed out how you could clearly see that someone was sitting on my mom’s bed, near where the pills were. I looked directly down on the floor and a white object on the floor catches my eye. Sure enough I look down and it’s yet another loose pill, just sitting there! It was the same exact one as the one I found in the days prior. 
I couldn’t believe it. Had my brother let this girl lead him so far down the dark path that he now is addicted to pills? I have long thought she was on something. Through the few years they were together, she has made a few mentions of pills. She had mentioned it once to me when they first started dating and also to a few family members. She also had made a few comments when my mom was in the hospital about her having bottles and bottles of pain killers at home. Then there was that day when she left the hospital to go to the doctors office for an upper respiratory infection and she came back and showed everyone that her doctor had prescribed her Percocet. I have NEVER heard of a doctor prescribing narcotic pain medication for an upper respiratory infection and apparently, neither had anyone in the room that day! She played it off that day as if the doctor just wrote them down without her even knowing. There’s no way. She had to have gone there and either asked for them or faked some type of pain or injury. Either way, if she is addicted to pills I wouldn’t be very surprised. It would explain a lot of the erratic behavior. 
(to be continued in my next post) 

The will to do what’s right…

When you step outside of a situation and start to look at it from a different perspective, you start to realize just how fucked up it really is. For the last ten years of my life I was living in a sick, delusional world of my family’s making. I was following along with a program that I didn’t agree with because I had too much respect for my mother. Months before she died, I stopped engaging with my aunts and I stepped back and realized how truly dysfunctional they both were. When they completely dismissed my mother’s depression, months prior to her death it showed me how stubborn, phony and self centered they both were. I had set up boundaries and my Aunt Debbie refused to respect them. Every time I tried to move past things, she crossed the line. I knew now that it wasn’t me and through therapy I learned that you are not obligated to to keep ANYONE in your life if they don’t treat you right. My aunt’s didn’t treat me right and more so, they didn’t treat the sister that they supposedly loved so dearly, right. They both lacked respect for her boundaries, especially Aunt Bea. There had been several conversations with Aunt Bea about her relationship with Satan and how hurt my mom, and Aunt Bea continued to cross those boundaries and disrespect her wishes. I felt really bad that I told my mom in her last hours here on earth that I would try to fix everything, however I think if she could see what was going on right now, she would understand that fixing everything for me, means distancing from this their mentally unhealthy way of living and focusing on my life, my family and healing. 
It still hadn’t fully hit me that my mother was gone. With all this other bullshit going on I felt as if I didn’t even have time to process what I had gone through in those last few weeks, what my mom went through and how everything took a turn for the worst so suddenly. I planned on just relaxing that weekend. 
It was Black Friday and while most people were out shopping for the latest deals on electronics and toys for the holidays, I was dealing with this bullshit family drama. I knew it was too good to be true that I made it through the morning without hearing shit from any of them but at 1:21pm my husband received a text from my brother that read, “I’ve just met with an attorney, [my name] can either give me the original will that she took, that names my Aunt Bea and Aunt Debbie as executrix or I will be going to court on Monday to file to be named as Administrator.”
First off, me and my husband realized that what we had was just a copy of my mom’s will. I had no clue as to where the original will was. All this time I thought my brother had taken it but apparently he didn’t. I also had no idea what my brother was taking about when he said he was filing to be “administrator”. To be honest, I knew just about NOTHING when it came to wills, how to go about probating one, etc. I hadn’t looked into ANY of that nor did I plan on it for at least a few weeks. I figured we would try to get through the holidays and then worry about this shit. Now I was being forced into doing my research .
My husband didn’t respond to my brother and the next day, while I was trying to catch up on sleep, my husband got a phone call from my brother. While I don’t remember exact words that were said, I do know that the purpose of my brother’s call was to try to manipulate my husband into convincing me to go along with my brother filing for administration. When my husband explained to him that we didn’t have the original will and should at least try to file to copy we had, my brother told him that probating a will would drag out the process and take much longer. My husband was almost persuaded when he got off the phone to just allow my brother to file for administrator. 
I didn’t even call my brother back or acknowledge anything he said. I told my husband I wanted to do some research and so that’s what I spent that weekend doing. I found out that there are two ways a person could die, intestate (without a will) or testate (with a will). When a person dies intestate and they do not have a will, the state they live in will then need to appoint a administrator of the estate, collect all debts of the estate and then determine how the assets, (cars, houses, money) will be divided up and whom it will go to. In the event the deceased didn’t have a will, a relative, including any of the heirs can apply for what’s called “letters of administration.”. To apply for letters of administration, (which I will refer to as LOA, from here on out,because typing that whole thing out is a bitch!) the applicant must enter a petition to the surrogates court in the state and county in which the deceased person resided in at the time of their death. The court will then notify all next of kin, that the person applied for LOA and citations will be delivered. Basically when you apply for LOA, you are applying to be executor of someone’s estate. 
After reading about LOA I decided it would be in my best interest to contact an attorney and see what my options were. I reached out to one of my mom’s friends who I knew worked in an attorney’s office, Geri. Geri gave me an appointment that Monday and I went in to learn more about the process of LOA. It was an interesting meeting to say the least. My husband sat in on it with me. I explained my situation and what my brother was doing and I found out quite a few things. For starters I had to locate the original copy of my mom’s will. Usually the will is kept by the attorney who drafted it. While it was possible to file the copy I had, it was best if I could try and find the original copy. 
Possibly the best part of my meeting with the lawyer was when he further explained LOA to me and what its purpose was and how it worked. When you apply for LOA you must fill out a sworn affidavit. On that sworn affidavit there is a paragraph that states that you performed a diligent search and to the best of your knowledge, you determined that the testator (deceased person) died without a will and that no will ever existed. Well we knew that my brother was well aware of the fact our mother had a will, but what was best of all was that we had solid evidence of that knowledge in the form of the text that he sent to my husband, which again said, “I’ve just met with an attorney, [my name] can either give me the original will that she took that names my Aunt Bea and Aunt Debbie as executrix or I will be going to court on Monday to file to be named as Administrator.” Not only does he acknowledge that he knew there was a will but he named specifics. The lawyer informed me that my brother was committing perjury. The goal from there was for me to try and track down, my mom’s original will. If and when I got it, we were going to file it with the court and that would put a stop to my brother’s LOA. 
To this day I cannot figure out why my brother wanted to bypass my mom’s will. The only two reasons I can think of is that “he”, and by “he” I mean Satan, either wanted control, or worse “he” did some real shady shit with my mom’s money and he wanted to cover it up. There was absolutely no other benefit to him being the administrator and bypassing my moms will other than those two things. 
I did a google search for the lawyer’s phone number but when I called it just rang with no answer. I tried for a few days to call that number but I never got an answer. I went back to the internet and tried again and I found a different number but that number was no longer in service. I was starting to give up hope that I would be able to find this will but something inside me said to just keep digging. I went pages and pages into google when finally I found a PDF file with the lawyer’s name on it. Apparently he was doing some public speaking event at a local college. At the bottom of the PDF was his contact info and a cellphone number. I had no idea if it was him or possibly his son who had the same name as him but I gave it a shot. No one answered. I left a message and just hoped for the best. The next day a woman called me back telling me that she was the lawyer’s secretary and that she needed a few days to try to locate the will. 
I didn’t hear from her for about another week or so. I tried reaching out again but she put me off saying she was still searching for it. In the meantime I went to my mom’s house, to try and see what other information I could collect, so I could start notifying people of her death. When I got there I went in her office to try to find some of her old bills and to my surprise all of her bills were gone. I thought maybe they had just been moved and so I knew another location that she kept old bills. I searched all over her house and realized that my brother and his wife had removed every single box, folder and envelope that had old bills in it. They also took her wifi router and a few other things. I couldn’t believe it. 

Finally after two and a half weeks of being put off, I finally got a phone call from the lawyers secretary. She had found my mom’s will. She offered to have it overnighted to me, but she didn’t send it until the next day. Two days later I received an envelope in the mail containing my mom’s and my dad’s wills. When I opened the package I cried. I turned to the photos of my mom and dad that I had sitting on my kitchen counter and showed them the envelopes and said, “look mom and dad, I am doing the right thing.”
I was unsure if my brother had actually gone down to the court and filed for administration or if he was bluffing and just trying to get me to give him the will. I don’t understand why he felt so entitled, like he was supposed to be the person in charge. I found it really funny that there was absolutely no desire for him to help out when my mom was sick. He was perfectly ok, taking a backseat and letting me handle EVERYTHING. The most he did for her was bring her for that second opinion at a different hospital. That was it. Never once did he call up and offer to go food shopping with her, or do her laundry or even just to bring her dinner one night. I did everything. I’m not saying my brother isn’t entitled to half her estate. He absolutely is and there is no debating that, but he gave up his rights to be in charge of everything when he chose to take the side of his wife and completely disregard my mom and her feelings for nearly three years before she died. He gave up his right when he went against her wishes and signed power of attorney over to his wife to handle my mother’s affairs, which by the way, my lawyer informed me was not how things worked. You cannot use power of attorney to speak on someone’s behalf who is speaking on someone else’s behalf. That’s probably the one area in which power of attorney is not applicable. 
. Along with the wills, the attorney sent me a letter that stated he was sending me the wills and what day he sent them. I assume that was included for probate purposes. That very same day, December 5th, I received the will I went out and when I came home I got a knock at my door from a strange man. It was a court server handing me a citation that my brother had indeed filed for LOA on December 1st, exactly ten days after my mother died. My lawyer told me that in all his years of practice which was probably 40+, he had never seen ANYONE file for LOA that quickly after someone had died. He told me usually his clients wait at least a month, if not more. Creditors usually give a six month grace period for the bereaved. He told me that it took at least a week or so to fill out the 28 page petition to file for LOA. 
There was no way in hell that my brother performed a diligent search for my mom’s will. In the days following her death there simply wasn’t time. She died on Sunday, November 20th. That Monday we had to prepare for the funeral. The following two days, Tuesday and Wednesday were her wake. Thursday was thanksgiving and Friday he was already meeting with a lawyer. Saturday and Sunday, I would assume all lawyer’s offices are closed and by the following Thursday he was in court filing for LOA. I sadly do not believe anything my brother says. In fact, it’s my belief that my brother started this process before my mom even died. I do not believe he met with an attorney on Black Friday. Most non-retail businesses are closed that day. Usually when the courts are not in session, lawyers also take the day off. I’d love to know what lawyer was working the day after thanksgiving. My brother was full of shit. He and his wife had obviously been preparing for this since well before my mother died. 
My brother wasn’t the only one planning things, I had made a plan too. My plan was to wait until my lawyers filed the will, the following week before I said anything to anyone that I had tracked down the will. I wanted my brother and Satan to think everything was working in their favor and that I was going along with their bullshit program. Hey, I have to have a little fun too. On December 5th the same day I got the citation and the will, I received a very “informative” email from my brother which read, 
Hi [my name],

 

I just wanted to reach out to you to give you some information on mom’s estate. Below you’ll find the information for the lawyer handling her estate. He has filed all the necessary documentation with the [county in which we reside] Surrogates Court. You’ll be notified by the court regarding the dates of any proceedings. I’m not attending any of the proceedings because the attorney is handling this. If you need to send anything for the estate or you have any questions about the estate, you can contact him.

 

Once the papers have been issued, which will probably be late January at the earliest, an estate account will be opened and assigned a FEIN in lieu of a Social Security number. Then bills and disbursements will be made from and to this account. The account will be opened at Chase, since that is where she banked and it will make the conversion to the estate account smooth.

 

So far, the items that have been paid or will be paid are the attorney fees, the filing fees for Surrogate’s Court, HELOC, vehicle note, insurances, oil, PSEG and the Receiver of Tax bill. I’ve paid for some of these already and will continue to pay for them until the estate account has been established.

 

In the meantime, we need to find time to discuss the contents of her house. Please let me know your thoughts on this. If you’re ok with it, I’d like to get mom’s bed over to [our grandmother]. I’m sure she’d really appreciate it, it it’s alright with you.” 

 

With regards to these emails, they will become part of her estate records, so we need to keep them pertaining to the estate. Let me know if you have any questions for me or you can ask the attorney directly.
 
Sincerely,
 
[my brother]
 
(He then gave me his attorney’s information). 
What a load of vague bullshit. While I can’t be 100% sure my brother wrote this letter himself, I know he at least wrote part of it, and what pisses me off is that he, A) seriously underestimates me B) thinks I’m a fucking idiot. This is all “fluff” to make it seem like he’s doing his job and communicating. When you apply for LOA, they want to see you are being proactive and that you’re willing to communicate. Nothing in this letter has ANY substance whatsoever. Right from the get go, he’s trying to manipulate me. Why is he telling me that he isn’t attending any of the proceedings? What’s the relevance of that? The only relevance I can think of is that if I do not show up to the first court date, it’s basically saying that I am agreeing to him being appointed administrator (executor) of my mom’s estate. Perhaps he thinks I didn’t read the fine print on my citation. His fucking vernacular just annoys the shit out of me, “In lieu.”, shut the fuck up you pompous asshole. I am your sister, not some professional. He just wants to sound smart as like he has such an amazing understanding of the probate process. He is also full of shit that he’s been paying all the bills. He just wants to make it appear that he’s so smart and has everything under control. Then he starts acting like it was his idea to give my grandmother, my mom’s bed. 

I didn’t respond. I wanted to wait until my lawyers filed my mom’s will. And they did about a week later on December 13th. Once it was confirmed that they had filed it with the courts, I wrote my brother a nice letter in response to the piece of shit he wrote to me, and being the sarcastic asshole I can be sometimes, I wanted to make it all professional and robotic sounding for him. I knew my creative writing classes would pay off one day! 
Here’s my response: 
My name 

Address 
December 12, 2016
[brother’s name], c/o, [Satans name] POA (power of attorney😂😂)  

Their address 

(Side note Satan didn’t take my brother’s last name when they married. Instead she held on to her ex-husband’s name) 
Dearest [brothers formal name] , 
       I am hereby writing you this letter in regards to “mom’s” estate. I must inform you that I have received the original copy of “mom’s” Last Will and Testament from her attorney, [attorney’s bame] ESQ., on the 5th day of December, in the year two thousand and sixteen. I have contacted my attorney and handed over “mom’s” Last will and Testament, along with other “documentation”, including, but not limited to, your last email to me and a text message addressed to my husband, where you acknowledged the existence of the will and named executors . ALL of previously stated documentation has been submitted and filed with the Surrogate Court of Suffolk County, in the state of New York. Please inform your attorney that his services will no longer be necessary, as no letters of administration will be distributed to any of the involved parties. I will not be attending any of the “proceedings” unless hereby instructed to do so by my representative. 
Once the will is probated and deemed authentic, and executors are appointed, it would then be appropriate to congregate at a neutral location to discuss the contents of “mom’s” estate including the house itself, her vehicle and any other items bequeathed to us, and how they will be divided up and distributed. 
Sincerely, 

[me]

[my phone #]

[my email address]
He never responded……
I also reached out to my Aunt Debbie. Since she blocked my number on her phone and on Facebook, I sent her an email and to ensure that she saw it, I had my husband also send her my message in a text. In my message I sent her a photo of the cover letter, the lawyer sent, along with the wills and I wrote,

 “Listen I need to talk to you. I found mommy’s will. I had to track down her lawyer and have them search for it. I finally received the original copy of her will last week. Can you please get in touch with me? I do not want to fight or argue. I just want to carry out my mom’s wishes in the way SHE wanted them carried out. I just want to do the right thing. She put you for a reason. Because she trusted you’d be fair and do the right thing.”
I never got a response. Days later I tried again and wrote, 
Aunt Debbie, 
I tried reaching out to you once already via text and emails. I heard about [her boss’s wife] so I don’t know if you’re busy with that or just ignoring me. I just don’t understand what’s going on. Like I said, I’m not looking to fight. I just want an answer. That’s all. I mean it’s just basic human decency. I’m trying to do the right thing here. Don’t know what more I can do. If you don’t answer I will assume you don’t want to do it. If you do want to honor my mom’s wishes then you are going to have to deal with me. If you would like to talk like adults I am willing to meet you somewhere. It’s up to you. I just want to do what’s right by my mom like I always tried to do. I’m broken. I have been to hell and back. I just want to have a conversation. That’s all.” 
Again…..no response.
I didn’t even bother with Aunt Bea. She wouldn’t even answer me. Besides, I had heard from another family member that she had said she didn’t want to be involved in the handling of my mom’s estate. Even if she did, I knew it would be useless to reach out to her. 
(To be continued in my next post)

 

Crappy Thanksgiving

When my dad died, I  had months before I had to deal with my first big holiday without him. He died right after Easter, in 2006. My mom died November 20th, 2016, the day after we said our final goodbyes to her (4 days after her death) it was thanksgiving. Normally thanksgivings were spent at my mom’s house. My mom loved food and she loved to cook. She would make enough food to feed an army, but over the years out thanksgiving table got smaller and smaller. When we lost my dad we’d spend thanksgiving with my brother’s ex-fiancé’ family. That all changed when my brother and her broke it off. By the next thanksgiving my brother was engaged to Satan and our thanksgiving table changed to me, my mom, my husband; my son, and random other guests. The first year it was my uncle,who was sort of estranged from the family after his daughter was molested by my Aunt Bea’s and Uncle Bob’s son. He and his wife sort of replaced my brother. The year before my mom passed, it was when we had just found out about the large mass on my mom’s kidney. Little did we know then but it would be the last thanksgiving we spent with her. Even though she was so nervous about the possibility of her having cancer she still managed to make us a nice meal. We skipped the traditional thanksgiving day food and made lasagna. It was way better than a turkey, in my opinion. I really miss my mom’s cooking.
I had absolutely no desire to celebrate thanksgiving. I could care less about it. My husband’s brother invited us to eat at his house, but I asked my husband if he’d mind if I sat this one out. I was exhausted. It had been well over a week since I had slept, more than a few hours. I had just gone through two days of awkward and sad conversations, people looking at me with sad faces, not knowing what to say to me, and so I just wanted to not have to talk. I had a touch of laryngitis from all the crying and talking and I just needed to be alone and relax. I have always valued my alone time which is something I don’t get much of being a mother and when I’m going through hard times like I did in the last few weeks of my mom’s life, i really needed it. 
When I woke up that morning, I was still reeling from my text conversation with my brother the day prior , but what bothered me more than anything about it was the fact that my brother seemed to be under the impression that I was trying to have my mother write him out of her will! It was really bothering me that he actually thought that. My brothers own words were that my Uncle Bob had been advising him the whole time. Logically Uncle bob and/or my aunt Debbie were the only two people who could’ve put something like that in their heads because they were the only ones who really had a close relationship with them. 

I didn’t care that it was thanksgiving. These fucking assholes, ALL of them, made one of the most, if not the most, difficult time in my in my life; ten times more difficult. They made me feel uncomfortable at my own mother’s wake. They hurt her and they hurt me numerous times throughout the last few years and I’m supposed to feel bad about disrupting their thanksgivings? I decided to text Aunt B and confront her about it, I wrote, 

“I have a question, Who told my brother I was tryin to get my mom to take him off her will??? First off that is not true AT ALL. I’m trying to narrow down the playing field here and I know you and uncle Bob are the ONLY ones have a special relationship with Him and Satan, and IF it was either or both of you, you should be ashamed of yourselves. My mom talked to me three years ago and told me she wanted to take him off because she didn’t want [Satan] getting her money or having control over her stuff. I actually told her I’d be VERY angry with her if she did that and id give him half of everything anyway. I NEVER ONCE brought up that subject with my mom because I was very uncomfortable talking about it and it wasn’t my concern. Getting her better was. SHE brought it up to ME and several others that she wanted to make me the executor of her will but clearly that didn’t happen. I didn’t care either way. It was her money and her decision. I’m disgusted that anyone would a) go against my mom’s wishes because she told everyone what she wanted. B) try to stir the pot and cause drama between my brother and I knowing that my mom didn’t want us fighting. You both know how she felt about [Satan]. It was no secret. Please don’t under estimate my intelligence. I know what this is really about. I know my brother has been being coached by someone. We all need to sit down and have a discussion about how to move past this. I have her on tape saying what she wanted. No one should be doing anything without discussing it first.” 

With that I got no reply! Her lack of reply told me everything I needed to know. If it wasn’t her she simply could’ve and would’ve written back that it was wasn’t her. Instead like a coward she chose to bury her head in the sand and say nothing at all. 
I will always be thankful to my Aunt Bea for donating her kidney to my mom. What she gave her was a gift not only for her but for us. We got to have her around for 25 more years. I can never thank her enough for that. On the flip side of that, her selfless act did not give her the right to treat my mom like shit, to talk to her like her feelings didn’t matter and judge her or to dictate what she does with her life. I read some messages between her and my mom from the year prior and the way Aunt Bea talked to her was very invalidating, dismissive, condescending and flat out mean. I didn’t even need to read those messages though, I heard about it all of the time. My mom would call me up, upset because she had gotten into a heated discussion with Aunt Bea. I had told my mom several times not to discuss the things with me and my brother being estranged, with her, because it seemed like Aunt Bea would purposely try to get her upset. She would tell my mom she’s ridiculous for being hurt or that she would never fight with her children’s spouses, or get involved in their relationships (which is a complete bullshit lie, I have seen ER being overly involved  with my own eyes) etc, etc. She would make excuses for my brother’s behavior, all of the time too. For years I would tell my mom that ever since my cousin told me that Aunt Bea’s son molested her, that my aunt Bea acted passive aggressively towards me, and my mom always told me I was crazy or imagining things, but once things went south with my brother and Satan, my mom finally saw it. In fact she even confronted Aunt Bea about it once when they got onto a heated discussion about my brother. Aunt Bea was making some cryptic Facebook posts that were very obviously geared towards my mother, and so my mom confronted her. My mom said to her “I have to protect [me] because I think you still hold [me] responsible for what she had no choice getting involved in at 21 (I was actually 24) years old.” Aunt Bea responded and no where in her response did she ever deny holding resentment towards me. All she did was deflect by saying, “how the f are you comparing that with [me] ?? And why the “F” do you think I’m holding anything against her ? (Rhetorical question)???!!!!! How long ago was that???? Have I treated her as if I’m holding anything against her??? That’s almost 10 years ago!!!!!! Really! You’re grasping at straws now. Honestly…I think [me] can handle herself vey [sic] well.” 

Her excessive use of punctuation marks, would suggest she’s very defensive, but notice that not once, anywhere in there, does she deny having resentment towards me. She turns it around on my mom (deflection),asking her why the “f”she thinks that? Then she deflects by pointing out the length of time that has lapsed. Finally, she asks if she’s treated me like she has been holding anything against me, once again, deflecting the responsibility away from her and onto my mom. No where in there does it say anything like, “I don’t hold anything against her.” or “I am not resentful, I understand that she did what she thought was right.”. No where in there did she say she never did nor still does carry any resentment. This right here is a prime example of how abusive and/or highly manipulative personality types escape responsibility. 
As my solo thanksgiving day progressed, I heard from a few family members. One informed me that my Aunt Debbie had been calling other family members in my family and telling them that I “destroyed my mother’s will”!  Of all the low life, non-sensical, utter bullshit to come out of their mouths, this one by far pissed me off the most. At the time, I though this came from my brother and his wife because back when my mom was in the hospital, I had removed all the paperwork pertaining to her will, and of course I did so with her consent. I was under the assumption that my brother and his wife went back into the safe after my mom’s death, to get the actual copy of my mom’s will and realized it was missing and so they went around and told everyone that I had destroyed it, for what reason, I don’t know but that’s what I was thinking at the time. 
I was irate. I mean beyond pissed off and so I took a photo of the copies I had of both my mom’s and dad’s wills, and a took a picture of them, alongside a piece of paper in which I wrote the current date, Nov, 25th 2016. Along with my photo I sent a really confrontational text that read, 

“I destroyed my mother’s will?!! Are you FUCKING KIDDING ME? Shame on you for believing anything that comes out of that little twat’s mouth. Wow. Shame on you. Pull your head out of aunt barbara’s ass already. I took all the paperwork out of my mom’s safe when I caught those two sneaky, lying little cunt bags in there. I cannot fucking believe that YOU of all people would fucking believe this bullshit. Shame on you. Don’t sit around and cry about my mom when all you do is spit on her grave. I’m so fucking disgusted with you people. How fucking DARE you. How fucking DARE you. Nevermind the fact that I’m the one who was sitting there with her day and night while those two pieces of shit were counting her money. I can’t find the original copy. THEY fucking took it. Vinnie fucking lied right to my mother’s face. She asked him if he was at the house and he lied right to her face and said he wasn’t. Then he switched his story and said he was there but he was looking at the bills. He’s a fucking LIAR. They were counting her money before she even died. I can’t fucking believe this shit. It’s disgraceful…..    Oh and when I went in my moms safe and took the paperwork I told my mom I took it and her answer was, “good”. I can’t believe you’d even believe that shit. …. Keep burying your head in the sand. I cannot believe you would ever believe those two pieces of shit. You of all people. 

She replied, “Watch your mouth you are turning into trash!!!!!!!!!! God help my sister …..how dare you say that I spit on her grave……. GET HELP [my name , YOU NEED IT YOU DISRESPECTFUL LITTLE BITCH!!!!!! 

The whole family is going to see this message .”.

I came back at her with this, 

“Good send it to everyone. I really don’t give a fuck. You think you’re scaring me? I got help. I’m done with the fucking lies that you people are spreading about me. If that’s what’s going to make you feel vindicated go the fuck ahead. “

She replied to that with, 

“Grow a pair of balls and stop hiding behind letters and messages..”

I decided to take her advice and so I offered her this, 

“Ok come to my moms house. You want me to come to aunt barbara’s house? I’ll be there in 30 minutes and tell you all what the fuck is up and what’s going on…

You know why write messages. Because no one can ever twist my words. And you can keep hiding behind your big sister……

The problem is none of you can handle the fucking TRUTH. You wouldn’t know it if it slapped you in the face. My mother is FUCKING DEAD YOU ASSHOLE. Grow a heart….

I need fucking help??? Wow . That’s laughable. I’m the one who was sitting with her when she fucking died. I need help? Stop fucking gaslighting me. Im not crazy for having a fucking heart and I’m done with you people trying to tell me I am. Someone who needs help wouldn’t be sitting up at a hospital day and night with their mother. Go feed your dogs”

(I should explain the go feed your dogs comment. In a conversation with my husband after the healthcare proxy bullshit with my brother, aunt Debbie told my husband that she would be up at the hospital more often, but that she worked all day and then had to go home and feed her dogs. That was her excuse for not spending more time with my mom, in her final month of life. She had a fully grown, adult daughter, living in an apartment adjacent to her house that was fully capable of feeding dogs for her, but that was her excuse. Her fucking dogs were more important than her sister.) 
Like the immature asshole she is, she responded to that with, “Really please you need help……you really need help, get help for yourself.”.

So I wrote, “Ok aunt Debbie. Keep living in denial. Wow. I honestly feel bad for you”

And she continued, “Really please you need help……you really need help, get help for yourself.”. 

So I said, “Blah blah fucking blah blah. Keep saying that. I already go to therapy. You’re not hurting me. You’re just looking immature.“.
And again like a five year who doesn’t have the brain power to have a real adult conversation, she wrote, “Bye”.
I probably should’ve ended it there but I didn’t so I said, “Oh what’s the matter don’t want me ruining your thanksgiving? I’ll come over aunt Bea’s and we can sit face to face and discuss this. Like grown fucking adults.”.

Suddenly my phone started ringing and it was my cousin Gianna, Aunt Bea’s daughter. I knew Aunt Debbie was at Aunt Bea’s house with her. If there’s anyone in my family who is completely fucking clueless as to what’s going on in my life it’s her. I didn’t answer her call and so Aunt Debbie texts me, “answer your phone Gianna is calling.” 

I replied, “Another person who doesn’t know shit trying to talk to me. Holy fuck. I can’t honestly. Just stop.”

I then reminded her, “Still didn’t answer. You want to discuss this face to face? Meet me at my moms house or I will come there. Why are you scared?”

Aunt Debbie’s reply, “The way disrespected this entire family you can stay home!!!!”
(Here we go with the fucking dramatics! Years ago, that comment may have affected me but once you break from the brainwashing, and you see how these people operate and what tactics they use to try to manipulate you into thinking the way they want you to think, you don’t fall for it.) 
Then the real manipulation started. You see I know Aunt Debbie’s style. I have never met a woman with more conflict in her life than her. She has a laundry list of ex-friends who she got into fights with and no longer speaks to. I know how she fights with her own daughter and the way she disrespects her. She kept going,  “I didn’t want to do this but you just don’t STOP!!!!!  

Aunt Bea texted you three messages with her concern for you and you haven’t acknowledged not one of her text. (She sent one text and it wasn’t for concern, it was for her to blow smoke up my ass, to absolve herself from guilt and to try and proveto others that she is the innocent one and I am pissed off for no reason.) And now you pick the day after we all said farewell to your mom to badger her???? (🙄)You really didn’t let my sister go with peace in her heart. (Wow really? Talk to my brother who was harrassing her about healthcare proxies, her will, her bills, me, and his stupid fucking camera, but yeah I didn’t let her go with peace…fuck you)  I have been sick to my stomach with all that has been going on for the month…..Especially the Donna (my brother’s ex-fiancé’s mother) show that took place first in the hospital and the finale right in front of my sister’s coffin. I was embarrassed as I stood with, your Mom’s boss. That was disgraceful the whole family is sick that you didn’t even put a stop to her inappropriate behavior. You dismissed everyone’s feelings when everyone put their feelings aside for you that day.(like she was doing me some type of favor by not hating me for  24 hours ) There were so many things, pictures of Aunt Mandi with Uncle [child molestation victim’s father] (it was a group photo, that she happened to be in)  (he was upset), your brother with [his ex fiancé] (it was anotner group photo she happened to be in) , WTF were you thinking?????

The disrespectfulness you showed towards your brother, my sister Bea, Uncle Bob & Cousin Lenore (???? 🤔) , do you really think that went unnoticed by all??? [my name] please let your Mother RIP, why would you pick on Aunt Bea of all people she gave your mother 24 more years of her life, are forgetting that? (Innocent Aunt Bea. Here we go, manipulate me with the kidney transplant, like I fucking asked her to do it. ) My sister is not even gone for four full days and the drama continues. Aunt Bea never spoke to anyone about your mothers will. (She’s right most likely it was my uncle Bob). We hoped that you and your brother would work it out. Now you have a tape of my sister, I am sick to my stomach!!!!!!! Perhaps you didn’t want any of us there. SHAME ON YOU !!!! I really wanted to be there for you but now you are dissing my family. Did you even think of [my grandmother], she has been saying I thought they were talking, we haven’t answered her maybe you could.” 

This is such a load of manipulative bullshit! She is out of her mind. 
I responded to her, but hadn’t yet read her long rant. “Aunt Debbie seriously. I’m so fucking disappointed in you. What 60 year old women does shit like this? Really. You think my mom didn’t know what was going on? She asked me everyday if anyone called me. I told her no. She was very upset with you and aunt Bea. I didn’t disrespect the entire family. I didn’t disrespect anyone. I stood up for myself. There’s a HUGE difference. You and aunt Bea. Those are the only two people I have an issue with……You have no fucking clue what you’re even talking about……You are so fucking clueless. It’s not even funny”

My mom was upset with her sisters, for the last few months of her life, for various reasons. As you will see I had had enough with the manipulative bullshit. 
She replied with this,“My sister is gone, you don’t have to worry about us. Go take care of your family. Let me not say what you did at times to your own mother!!!! (No fucking clue what she meant by that.) I’ll leave it at that…..You constantly negativity pecking in her ear. I’m done [my name]!!!”

I finally finished reading her big long paragraph and responded, “You ALL sure as hell stuffed your fucking faces with the food that Donna’s boyfriend provided. My mom was still friends with Donna. Why was your exboyfriend there? My mom and I just went to dinner with Donna in sept so if I’m being disrespectful then my mom was too. She was friends with her just like you talk to [exboyfriend #1] and [exboyfriend #2] and [exboyfriend #3]”. 

(Yeah that’s only three of the 20 boyfriends she’s had in the last decade).

I continued ,“I didn’t mention ANY of this bullshit to her so it shows how much you know. [my brother] was up there crying to her about his camera like a little fucking baby. Don’t tell me. I talked to my mother like a real human being. Don’t tell me what I told her and didn’t tell her. Seriously. Get a clue already……I don’t need to hide behind you people. Don’t want to talk to me anymore. FINE. I already lost the most important people in my life. Nothing else is going to hurt me more. I don’t need a family to back me up. Want to talk about being insecure……  I know who I am and what I did for my mother and I was there holding her hand when she took her last breath which is more than any of you can say. She died in peace and you best believe that…..I’m done with you fucking gaslighting me. Go back to sleep. I know who I am and I’m fucking god damn proud of who I am, and you or anyone else isn’t going to take that shit away from me.”

She started making excuses, “I never said I didn’t like Donna, you just invited drama to my sister’s funeral. I happen to like them both. And don’t tell me who could come to your Mom’s wake, for your own little brain [exboyfriend #1] always talked to your mom on Facebook. He is 40 year family friend. You did not pay for that wake and food YOUR MOM DID! Put your fucking head back in the sand.”

(Does anyone see where I told her who could come to my mom’s wake? I brought her exes up to illustrate the fact that a) I don’t “invite” Donna, b) exes should be expected to show up at the wake.
I finally finished reading her ten mile long paragraph and wrote my own, “You are something else. You really are. First off since when did you become the family spokesperson? Guess what aunt Bea is a fucking liar. I disrespected her? Why did she lie and say she invited me to her house earlier in the day. I have the texts to prove that is a lie. Why did she tell people I wrote her a nasty letter! That also is a fucking lie. As for the pictures. Fuck you seriously. I woke up the morning of my mom’s wake and fucking printed 109 pictures at Walmart and spent $40 of my own money to do so. I didn’t have time cuz those pieces of shit were in a rush to get my mom in her urn. Are you fucking kidding me with this shit about pictures? What the fuck were you doing all day? Did you offer to help? No. you went running to aunt Bea’s house while we were looking at the pictures. You could’ve helped me and assured no ones feelings were hurt but you only give a shit about YOU!…...I didn’t “invite” Donna to shit. She came to pay respect to my mom. I can’t fucking control that. Sorry. Am I the fucking funeral police or something?…..

As for the way she acted I agree she was out of line and I tried to calm her down. I cannot fucking control another human being. People are upset at funerals in case you didn’t notice. Emotions run high. She’s not allowed to be emotional? She’s upset that her. FUCKING friend is dead. My mom told her how Satan treated her and she’s upset about that. God fucking bless her. She stands up for my mom more than her own fucking family did. Aunt Bea is too worried about being fucking liked by a stranger than making her sister feel supported. Shame on her. My mom was VERY upset with her and Uncle Bob. Like a little baby he un friended her and me on Facebook. Who the fuck does that? Then he blames aunt Bea when I confront him. Wow.”

Here she goes, with more gaslighting. It’s just so ridiculous.. “You aggravated my sister days on end….. it was all you!!!!! The constant drama, the constant pecking in her ear. My poor sister didn’t get a minutes rest with you.”.
This is a common tactic used by my family. Aunt Debbie does the same thing to her daughter, Tina ALL OF THE TIME. It’s disgusting. Yeah my mom was so miserable with me. That’s why she wanted me up at the hospital 24/7. That’s why I was the only person who was able to calm her down when she was panicked. That’s why she told me she loved me repeatedly the night she died, and that’s why she died, next to me, right? If I was a weaker minded individual this gaslighting tactic may have worked on me, but fortunately I know who I am and I know what I did for my mother in her last months, weeks and days. 
I was still addressing her long ass, bullshit paragraph, “I apologized to Uncle [child molestations victim’s father] and offered to take the picture down that I didn’t even fucking realize was there of aunt [Victims mother] and he told me it was ok. He didn’t even care. He came to my moms house after the second viewing and hung out with me. Why don’t you learn wtf you’re talking about. Then aunt Bea has to go home and spitefully make her own picture board and didn’t even fucking ask me if it was ok to put up. She had to include the THIRD fucking wedding picture of Satan and my brother just to be an asshole. Ever think I didn’t talk to those assholes for three years I have no pictures of them?….

As for cousin Lenore ummm I put pics of [Lenore’s sister] who actually sent me pics unlike ANY of you assholes. My mom was very close with her. Of course I included her pictures. My mom hates Lenore. Wow. Shows how much you know. “

Lmao, then she comes back with this, elementary school bullshit,”Grow up….. go talk to some other family member, I’m tired of getting disrespected by you. No one had to ask you anything….. SHE WAS OUR SISTER. That’s your problem, you are very controlling.”

I can only laugh at that response, “go talk to some other family member.” Like ok, I will. I’m certainly not interested in talking to her. Right, I’m the controlling one. For the last year, she tried to control my feelings, but I’m controlling. 
I responded, 

“Ha ha ha yeah ok I know aunt Debbie. I ruined my mom’s life. You are so delusional. I was the ONLY one there for her. Get the fuck out of here……

I’m controlling? I’m fucked up? Roh Kay. “
And she let her true maturity level shine,

Me: “look in the mirror.”
Her: “Really please you need help……you really need help, get help for yourself !”

Her again: “Really please you need help……you really need help, get help for yourself !

And again:……Really please you need help……you really need help, get help for yourself !

Me: “Oh the help thing again. Yup let me get help. You are like a little baby. Wow “

Her: “And Detective [My name] your brother made that board to include his own life.”

 I probably should’ve stopped entertaining her with the bullshit about the pictures but I didn’t, “I’m sorry. I wasn’t being a detective. I was told by others that aunt Bea made it. My mistake. My brother is a piece of SHIT. Fuck him. I put photos of him. Want me to send you copies of all the pictures? Again I have no pictures of them because we didn’t speak for three years. Would you like me to fucking time travel and take pictures of him? He did NOTHING for my mother but you can keep holding him on your delusional pedestal ……I thought you were blocking me? What happened? I have all the time in the world. I can keep going…..You are so brainwashed. Aunt [victim’s mother] was right the [my mother’s family name] committee.” (My aunt who was exiled out of the family calls  my aunt Debbie, my aunt Bea and even my mom as thecommute of bye family because of you ever go up against one of them, the rest will turn on you, like they controlled  everyone.)

I then sent her a copy of the recording of that my mom made of her trying to talk to Satan about repairing the relationship between me, her and my brother and I wrote, “maybe you need a reminder of how his bitch wife talked to my mother.”

Then, still addressing her long paragraph, I wrote, “And I didn’t record my mother. I recorded the palliative care meeting we had so I can remember all the info because I was the person caring for her She said something to me AFTER the meeting and I didn’t realize my phone was still recording. I can send you a copy if you would like.”

I also sent her a screen shot of my aunt B’s last text from the day my mom died, with her so called, “concern” for me, which read, “[my name] I am so sorry ❤, at the same time I am glad to know that you were with your mom during her final hours. I know she felt true comfort in you being there and I prayed for her to leave peacefully with you by her side. She told us all how good you made her feel. God bless you ❤.” 

So which one was it? Did I make her life miserable or did I bring her comfort? 

Again, still addressing her long paragraph wrote, “And when did I say I paid for the food? I didn’t pay for any of it and I never told you who to invite to the wake. Learn to read. I didn’t say anything close to that. And I guess aunt Bea’s text was all BULLSHIT. Man at least I’m real about my feelings…..                        I continued the “drama” but you’re calling people today and telling them I destroyed my mom’s will. Hello pot meet the kettle. I’m so glad I know how you feel about me. Thank you. I can be at peace now too. You just released me.” 
That was it. She stopped responding at that point in time. I was blocked! Finally. When shit got too real for her she ran. That’s how they operate. I can happily say now that I am free from their bullshit. 

(To be continued in my next post)

The wake, day 2, part 2

We hadn’t even made it to the funeral home yet and I knew it was going to be a long awkward day. My husband was irate. He told me to bring my mom’s truck back to the house immediately and so before the wake that’s what I did. I knew them being so nice was all a big bullshit act. I honestly don’t even think my brother had any clue as to what his wife was doing or saying. 
I still hadn’t had a good nights rest and by time I had reached the funeral home that day I was seriously in a state of complete shock. I tried to put all my ill feelings for my brother and his wife aside and just get through the day. I walked into the room to see my mom again. I walked up to the casket and knelt down and in my head I talked to her. I told her I was sorry. That I didn’t think I could fix things at this point. That I was so disappointed with my brother and I hoped she could see now and understand. 
As I walked around the room and looked at the old photos of days past I noticed there was another board filled with pictures and it wasn’t from me. When I got a better look I realized there was several photos from my brothers wedding. All the ones I didn’t include. There was also photos of my mom’s cousin and then various other people. I asked my cousin Nikki where that board came from and she told me Aunt Bea had brought it. Again that day my uncle Bob, Aunt Bea and even her kids sat off to the side right next to my brother and Satan. It was perfectly clear to me that day that they were trying to get under my skin. 
At some point halfway through I noticed that my Aunt’s and Uncle’s were all missing from the room. I asked someone where they went and I was told the funeral director brought them all downstairs to pick out their urns for my mom’s ashes. Then I noticed my grandmother was still in the room. No one had even thought to bring her down there to pick hers out and so I grabbed her and escorted her down to the showroom. My aunt Bea and Aunt Debbie were down there and as soon as Aunt Bea realized my grandmother hadn’t picked hers out, she grabbed her arm and started to drag her around the room. I left and let them take care of it from there. 
The first viewing had come and gone and my family came back to my mom’s house. After a while I realized that my brother and his wife weren’t there. They never showed up either. Didn’t matter anyway, they didn’t do a god damn thing to help out the day before. I forgot to add this in my post about the previous day so I’ll add it now. I had done all the shopping for the previous day but my brother told me he and Satan would bring the drinks. Of course they would, drinking is Satan’s favorite hobby. They came with a few bottles of Soda and one bottle of Sangria. Sangria for a wake? It just seems inappropriate, something you’d bring for a Cinco di mayo celebration. Anyway; my brother told me they were stopping and picking up drinks on the way there and asked if I needed anything. I realized that I forgot to buy sweetener for the coffee and so I asked him to pick some up. He shows up at the house and reaches into his pocket and pulls out a bunch of loose packets of various artificial sweeteners! He stole them from a local convenience store! I know they sell them there but Satan was probably too cheap to buy it herself. I just thought it was funny. 
At my mom’s house that day everyone had noticed that the lights were flickering in her kitchen. It happened the previous day too, but this day it was a lot more intense and everyone in the house was commenting on it. I had been in my mom’s house countless times in the past year and there was only one other time her lights were flickering like that. It was the day after her birthday. My husband and I were there because we didn’t attend the party at my brother’s house, the day prior. My brother and Satan conveniently forgot to give my mom her birthday gift at the party and so they showed up the next day with it. When they got there, the lights in the kitchen started to flicker like crazy. Satan didn’t like it. She was bugging out saying that it had to be because there was too much electric being used and so she ran around the house turning lights and air conditioners off trying to make it stop, but they just kept flickering. Every took it as a sign from my mom that she was with us. 
That day I really wanted to tell Uncle Bob he was not welcome in my mom’s home. It was very obvious he was visibly uncomfortable. He and Aunt Bea, both planted their asses in the living room that day and stayed there until it was time to go back to the funeral home. I couldn’t get it out of my head that my brother said he knew I was trying to get my mom to write him out of the will. There was only one place he could’ve gotten that from and I was looking right at the two guilty parties. 
By the time the second viewing came, I was completely wiped. I couldn’t talk anymore both literally and physically. I felt like a zombie, like someone had sucked the life out of me. As people were approaching me expressing their sympathy I hardly knew what to say anymore. I had told the story so many times at that point. I almost just wanted to hide in a corner and not be seen.
 At one point, my brother’s childhood best friend showed up. He had tried getting in touch with my brother but my brother never responded. I explained to him that my brother was with this succubus who wouldn’t allow him to have his own life. Knowing the story, he still came to pay his respects. A few days after the wake he messaged me to tell me that when he came to the wake he walked up to me and he could visually see that this had taken a huge toll on me. I looked wrecked over it. He said then he and his wife walked over to my brother and Satan and the vibe was completely different. They were laughing and talking like they were at a bar or something. He said they didn’t even look the least bit upset. He introduced his wife to my brother and he told me that Satan just turned her head away. Wouldn’t even give his wife the time of day. Yup, that sounded about right. 
The funeral director had asked us the previous day if we wanted a priest to do a eulogy. Although both me and my brother do not practice any religion we elected to have one because we knew it would bring comfort to my family. My mom was not religious either, but I believe she would’ve wanted a priest for the same reason. I also told the funeral director that I would’ve liked to say something too. The priest came in a few minutes before he was going to do his reading. Since we hadn’t attended church in over two decades, we didn’t really have a priest we were familiar with. He asked my brother and I a lot of questions about our mother. 
We went back in the room and lined up in the front row. I took my grandmother and sat her down in one of the big chairs. My husband sat on the opposite side. There was one chair left and obviously it was for my brother. My Aunt Bea went and grabbed another chair for Satan to sit next to us. It was symbolic of how we all thought of her. She was just an extra chair who never really felt part of the family. 
The priest did his reading in which I felt like I couldn’t even follow. I was really disappointed because it was totally impersonal. He didn’t make any mention of any of the things we had discussed about my mom prior. When he was done, he just said goodnight and walked away. He didn’t even ask if anyone else had anything to say about my mom. He just walked away. I had written a eulogy but I froze. I didn’t know what to do. I felt really strange standing up because by that time everyone started to get out of their seats and walk away. I never got to read my eulogy and I’m still upset about it to this day. 

The night was coming to an end and oddly enough, the lights in the room at the funeral home started to flicker just like the lights at the house, and everyone was commenting about it. This was it. Time to say goodbye to my mother forever. I looked around the room and realized there were so many cards. Before my brother could take them, I stated to go around the room and collect them. I also took the guest book. As the daughter, I felt it was my job to write out the thank you cards, to those who had attended the wake. I wanted to hold on to them for dear life. I knew if my brother got them there was no way he was writing out the cards. There was no way I was going to allow Satan to write out these cards. It was MY mother. They got to do everything else, this was my job. I purposely ordered blank cards so I could write a special message to everyone individually. 
I handed the cards off to my husband and told him not to let go of them. A few minutes later I see the funeral director taking them from him. I was so mad. They came in and pulled me and my brother out to the lobby. They had all the cards and photos put in bags. They handed us the death certificates and gave me four and my brother got five. As she stared to pack the Mass cards into the bag my brother asked if he could take half and I said, “no, I want to write out the cards.”. He sat there and argued with me and I firmly told him, “NO! Your wife is not writing out cards for my mother.”. He still took half of the thank you cards. I didn’t care. It was time I put my foot down and took control of my life. 
He and Satan left in a huff. I didn’t care. My aunts and uncles hung around to the end. We all stood there in silence around my mom’s casket. Everyone crying and holding one another. I felt like I couldn’t move. My grandmother went up to the casket and kissed my mom’s head and kept saying, “my baby, I love you.”. It was the most heartbreaking thing to watch. I couldn’t handle it. I broke down. I reflected on the last year and all me and my mom had gone through, all the ups and downs. All the struggles, the shock and disappointment. I felt like together we had gone to war, like we were soldiers of our own army. We both in our own ways fought so hard, right down to the end. I thought about how she suffered and endured so much pain both mental and physical and it was all for nothing. Saying that I felt defeated and deflated in that moment is an understatement. I felt like the biggest failure in the world. I couldn’t save her. I had been trying to save her for the last ten years of her life. Death changes you. My mom changed drastically after my dad died and I felt like I spent that last decade trying to find the old her and bring her back. I failed and especially in the last three years. I am a fixer by nature I just wanted to fix her but she was broken.
When she first got sick I promised her that I would be there with her to the very end, holding her hand and the one thing I could feel good about was at least that. I stick by her side to the last breath. I have never loved someone so much in my life. My mom was one of a kind. A truly unique person. The bond we shared was like no other. I will never be the same. My life is forever changed and I feel this huge void, this emptiness that I can’t even explain. I feel like half of me is missing. My mom was ALWAYS there for me. She loved me unconditionally, and it was truly unconditional. She always had my back and was the only person in this world who really, and purely understood who I was…..because she made me who I am today and I am so proud and lucky that I got to call her mom, for 35 years. 
The night was over. I was the last person to leave the room that night. I rubbed her arm one last time and told her I love and will miss her forever. I told her to go be with my dad. She is free now. Free from all the misery this world brought to her. Free from the pain. Free from the stress. She is finally at peace. I never truly understood what that meant when people said it after someone died, but now I get it. She is in heaven. 
From that day on I knew I was heading into a whole new battle. One like I had never known before and everything I thought was going to happen… well it happened. 

The wake, day 2 part one

It was the day before thanksgiving and the final day of my mom’s wake. I woke up that morning still reeling about the email alert I saw on her phone that someone had changed the primary email address on one of her accounts. I had enough of the sneaky bullshit from my brother and his wife and it was time they both knew that I was on to them and wasn’t fucking around anymore. I text my brother first thing in the morning and sent him a screen shot of the email and asked him, “who is making changes in mommy’s accounts?” I also informed him that he shouldn’t be making any changes or doing anything without discussing it with me first. He answered me back, “I’m not doing any of that.”. I asked him, “then who is?”. I also noticed another email that changes were made on her Verizon account and so I told him about that one too. He responded that he had no idea and asked if there were any others. Obviously someone was doing something. These places don’t know someone is dead until they are notified by the family. I then asked him, “How’d someone change the primary email on mommy’s [money market] account?”. I then said, ” It wasn’t mommy because she died on the 20th. I called the inheritance dept and they’re going to investigate it.”. I wanted to give him a chance to be honest but he replied with this, “And side note, if I shouldn’t be in any of those accounts without speaking to you first, should you then not be in any of those accounts without speaking with me first?”. The funny part was, I wasn’t in the accounts. I had no interest in them until I saw the email. I wasn’t finished, I also let told him, “And also, [Satan] shouldn’t be making ANY phone calls to ANY companies, [newspapers], [oil company] or otherwise.”. 
He text me back to call him but I wasn’t about to get into a huge blowout. Plus, I wanted his words in writing and mine as well. At this point in time I knew I had to protect myself. Then he texts me this. “1. I can call about any account that I am a beneficiary on, just like you can. “. I was still explaining to him how I came across the email. “I just got an email alert. I’m not in the accounts. I’m trying to deal with getting through the funeral.”. Since he didn’t yet respond to my text about his wife I wanted to make sure he saw it so I wrote, “[Satan] needs to stop calling. She told my husband. She really needs to step back it’s MY mother.”. That’s when he sent me a text that put me into a complete state of shock and showed me just how stupid he really was. “2. I gave [Satan] power of attorney for me, so she can call on my behalf anywhere…..” and then another message that said, “it’s my mother too.”. 

What in the actual fuck, I thought to myself. I seriously thought he was joking. No one could be that stupid!! I sarcastically replied, “Oh really. Ok. Where is the paperwork?”. I really thought he was fucking with me. I didn’t think he was that dumb and brainwashed by her. 
Throughout my mom’s entire hospital stay, I had tried to get him to sit down and talk. He ignored me every time and so once again, I brought up the fact that we should all be discussing this stuff together as a team. I wrote, “Ok well regardless we should all be sitting down and discussing this shit first. Where were you guys when mommy was alive? That’s what I’d like to know. There was no interest in helping then.”. I have to note here that I have said things of this nature to my brother several times since my mom’s passing. He NEVER responds to it. EVER! He doesn’t respond because he knows he doesn’t have an answer. He wasn’t there to help and he knows it. 
I then wrote, “send me a copy of the form. Please.”. My brother was still defending himself and wrote, “You also can’t be going in the house and taking what you want, or “telling me” that you’re taking mom’s truck. That’s not how it works. All of mom’s stuff belongs to the Estate until the will is settled.”. Such bullshit. I couldn’t believe he even said that after his wife called my husband and was offering up things that weren’t even hers. As far as me offering up stuff, did he really have a problem with giving our 89 year old grandmother my mom’s bed? I wrote back to him, “ha ha ok. [Satan] called [my husband] this morning and said I can take the truck.”
Again he was trying to get me on the phone to call him and I replied, “Im not fighting with you. Let’s get through today. I just want you to know that I know what’s going on.”, and then,”You can ask ANYONE, mommy didn’t want [Satan] touching any of her stuff. I have her saying it on tape if you’d like to hear it. So you’re going against her wishes, NOT MINE.” His reply to that, “Her will says what her wishes are. That we get everything 50/50. That’s it. That’s not you taking what you want, giving away what you want.”. What he said next though, was the real kicker, “Don’t try to guilt me. And I know you were trying to have her write me out of the will.”. 
I sincerely have NO FUCKING CLUE where he got that from and it sincerely pisses me off that he even thinks that. It’s insulting. I don’t know when I’ve EVER been known to screw over my family. This is news to me. There was NEVER any type of discussion between me and my mom like that. In fact, years ago, long before we knew of my mom’s cancer, she said to me one day that she wanted to cut my brother from her will because she didn’t want “that bitch” (Satan) having her money. My exact words to my mom, “well that’s fucking stupid! You’re not going to be here, who cares. I told her that if she did that she would be guaranteeing my brother and I would never talk again. I then told her if she did that, I’d just give him half anyway so it wouldn’t matter. That was the first and last time we ever discussed it and that was three years prior to her death. I would never do such a thing. Do I feel after the last three years the way my brother treated my mom that he deserved anything? At times, no but the reality was that my mom still loved my brother. That for the better part of his life, he was a good son to her. I would never, ever, try to fuck my family over like that, EVER! I was so insulted that whoever told my brother that, he actually believed it. 
After that he sent me 7 photos, page by page of the power of attorney forms. I had to make this clear to many people because I’d tell them the story and they though my mom had signed power of attorney over to my brother. No, my brother signed power of attorney, FOR HIMSELF, over to his wife so that she can handle my mom’s affairs, for him! My brother isn’t an idiot. It’s not like he’s a dumb, helpless fool. His wife makes him seem like one but he’s not. 
I sent the photos of the documents over to my husband and as he looked them over he realized that they were signed and dated on the 18th and with that we realized that, that was probably what she pulled out of her bag when him and I walked into the hospital room. It made me sick that her and my brother were sitting right at my mom’s bedside while she was laying there dying, talking about this shit, right in front of her, like she wasn’t even there. Since my mom’s death I’ve found out that those weren’t the only things being discussed by my mom’s bedside. I recently found out that on the day that the woman came from the funeral home, and I had said something to Satan, she went back in my mom’s room where Uncle Bob was sitting, along with my cousin Nikki’s mom and the two of them were talking shit about me, saying how I was “fucking dead to them.”. My aunt walked out of the room because she couldn’t believe how fucking wrong it was. That will haunt me for the rest of my life. How could they do that? They knew how upset my mom was over all of this. How could they stand there and talk about this shit in front of her? 
I replied back to my brother’s last stupid comment to me, “And I’m not taking MOMMY’S Car right now. I told you my breaks are shot on my car.”, and I added, “I wasn’t trying ANYTHING. I NEVER spoke to mommy about her will! EVER. Who told you that? Aunt bea? Wow you are delusional! Mommy actually told me about three years ago that she wanted to do that and I told her I’d be really pissed if she did and I’d give you half of everything anyway. You are fucking sick of you think that. Mommy told ME that she wanted to make me the executor. She told just about everyone she knows that. I NEVER spoke to her obviously because I’m not the executor. “. I had to let him know, “She didn’t like your wife and that’s the only reason why. It was nothing against you.”. He text me back, “you are being blocked, I’m done.”. 
Of course that was his answer. He never wanted to discuss any of the real issues. Whenever he was confronted with reality, he ran away. Whenever he didn’t have an answer, he ran away. Whenever I tried to resolve things, he ran away. His wife controlled his every move in life and now it was more than abundantly clear that she kept his balls locked inside her purse for safe keepings. He had completely lost his mind and control over his own life and his own relationships. I let him know, “It’s obvious that your wife needs to control everything and mommy just wanted me to have a fighting chance since I am the one who took care of her. Regardless she never changed it and you guys and us should talk before you go changing account email addresses and canceling shit……All you fucking care about is money anyway.”. By that time, I was blocked. 
I know my words were harsh and I take full responsibility over them. Everyone has a breaking point in life and he had way more than crossed the threshold. I kept my mouth shut for three years while his wife disrespected my mother, talked to her like she was some piece of trash off the streets, had no empathy for her. They went through her safe, into her most personal stuff, opened her mail, snooped around her home and I kept my mouth shut. I let them bully me into having a representative from the funeral home come to the hospital while she was still breathing, I let them decide when her wake was and how long it would be, I fucking had enough. Was the timing wrong of all of this? Yes, maybe it was. Maybe I should’ve waited but they had no consideration for mine or my mother’s feelings for three fucking years. I was done. 
(To be continued in my next post)

The wake, day one

I woke up early the next morning. The wake wasn’t until about 1:00 in the afternoon. I took some coffee and I ran straight to walmart in my pajamas. I was so thankful my my cousin and my mom’s cousin had gathered some photos for me. The rest I randomly selected off my mom’s Facebook page. I printed 109 photos in total that morning. 
I rushed home and like a machine I glued them all down to the boards. By the time I had finished I had enough time to get in the shower and get dressed. My husband and I opted to not bring my son to the wake. Although I wanted him to say goodbye to my mom, I didn’t want to put him and myself through the trauma. At three years old, only one month shy of turning four and he was at a weird stage where he was aware something wasn’t right but he couldn’t really understand what. I didn’t think he’d understand why my mom was laying there and not moving or why she couldn’t wake up. I thought it was too much for him to handle and so we had my sister-in-law watch him. 
My husband met me at the funeral home. Miraculously that morning my brother informed my husband that my mom’s life insurance plan didn’t lapse and so the funeral expenses would be paid by that after all. Personally I don’t think there ever was a lapse in the insurance. I think that was Satan just being vindictive because I was down with her Irish pub idea. 
My cousin Tina came out and helped me carry the photo boards into the funeral home. We waited in the lobby as the funeral director set up the boards. It was time to enter the room. I took a deep breath and walked through the doors. I was overwhelmed by the amount of flowers that were sent. They spanned the entire wall. My whole family had arrived by that point and we all walked in together. My husband and walked up to the casket. For the first time ever I didn’t feel scared at a funeral. It was also the first time I ever touched a dead person. I rubbed my mom’s arm. It felt hard and cold like a piece of wood. In a strange way, this part was the easy part to me. She was finally at peace. What I watched her endure for the last few months of her life, that was the hard part. I had non-stop anxiety for the last year of my life. I worried about her constantly. I never felt so helpless and powerless in my life. I lived in a constant state of fear, worry and stress. The stress had gotten to me so bad that it was starting to take a physical toll on my body. For the last few years I had started to break out in these two small patches of psoriasis on my scalp. When my mom was in the hospital that last month, the psoriasis covered my entire scalp. I had to wear a hat to the hospital everyday to cover up the medication that made my hair look oily and greasy. Still my itchy, greasy scalp was absolutely nothing compared to what I watched her go through. Seeing her finally at peace was actually a relief, in a weird sense. 
I had asked my brother to print some more photos because I had forgotten to print the ones he sent to me. I told him to take whatever photos he wanted down and to replace them with his photos. It was an honest mistake. To be honest though, I had not used all of the photos he had ha fed me the previous day at the funeral home. I used the one photo of my mom and his daughter and two of the five wedding photos that were in the envelope and that was already two too many. One of them I ripped in half in anger, knowing my mom was so upset that day and what that day caused her to go through. Yes it was an immature and stupid move. I have no excuse. I didn’t want to be accused of not including him so I made sure I chose a lot of old photos with him in them. I personally had no photos of him from the last three years because we didn’t speak. 

The most recent photos I personally had of him was from my son’s christening when he was 6 months old. 
After everyone kneeled down at my mom’s coffin and said their prayers, it was time to open the doors and let the public in. I turned around and saw my grandmother sitting in the second row of seats behind the big chairs that are usually reserved for the closest family members to the deceased. I told her to come sit in one of the big chairs. That was her baby. I placed my coat and purse on the other chair. I looked over to see my brother and Satan sitting off to the side in the rows where the non family usually sit. Satan was sitting down and I observed my uncle Bob entering the room. He walked over to her and sat down right next to her and put his arm around her as if she were the grieving daughter. For the entire length of the wake, my uncle Bob never came up to me and expressed his sorrow for my loss. He never even looked at to me. 

 

To me, my Uncle bob had made it distinctively clear that he was on my brother’s side. I still cannot believe that he used my mom’s death as a way to get back at me for “outing” his child molester son. I never had any type of argument or fight with him or my Aunt Bea for that matter. All I did was speak the truth that my family took the side of his son, the perpetrator, and not the victim, in a letter that I wrote to my aunt Debbie. I know she showed him that letter. As angry as I was with their son I always treated my Aunt and Uncle with the utmost respect. The fact that my uncle could stand in that room and not even so much as say sorry to me, shows what type of person he really is. I will never talk to that piece of shit again. He’s lucky I didn’t ask the funeral director to escort his ass out of there. 
A serious situation like a death will show you the true colors of the people around you. My Aunt Bea and Uncle Bob put on a very convincing act for the rest of the world. Where I come from, when someone dies you put all the bullshit aside. In the days leading up to and after my mom’s death they showed me who they really were and what they were all about. While my Uncle clearly showed me that he had no use for me, my aunt Bea was still going with the charade. I didn’t see it until two days later but she sent me a text the morning my mom died that read, “[my name], I am so sorry 💜 at the same time I was glad to know that you were with your Mom during her final hours. I KNOW she felt true comfort in you being there and I prayed for her to leave us peacefully with you by her side. She told us all how good you made her feel. God bless you 💜”

When I finally did see it, I never responded to her because I know she was totally full of shit. She was just one of 100’s of text messages I received that day. If she supported her husband and his decision not to so much as express his sorrows to me, she could go fuck herself too. I almost have more respect for him than I do for her. At least he treated me how he truly felt. They made me feel completely uncomfortable in an already extremely uncomfortable situation and that is something I will never forget. They made it very clear to me, as they sat right next to my brother and his wife at the wake, that they were 100% behind them and not me. I came to find out at that time, words from my brothers own mouth that my Uncle Bob was the one advising him while my mom was in the hospital that whole month. I had a feeling that was the case. My gut told me that ever since the day I saw them having that private conversation near the elevators. That only made me hate them more. They were the reason my brother and his wife were harassing my mom in her final days, to get her affairs, that were already in order, in an order that THEY would be happy with. I fucking hate those assholes. 
I was so overwhelmed at the wake. I felt like a zombie. I hadn’t really slept in days. I didn’t even know what to say to people when they came up to me with their sad faces. It was too much to handle. We got back to my mom’s house after the first viewing and everyone stuffed their faces. My brother, his wife, my Aunt Bea and Uncle Bob sat in the living room and none of them lifted a finger to help. I so badly wanted to kick their asses out of the house but I composed myself. As I knew, my aunts would be in my mom’s bedroom. I brought my grandmother in there and asked her if she wanted my mom’s bed. I knew she probably was sleeping on the same mattress she had since my grandfather was alive in the 90’s. My aunt’s seemed thrilled at the idea. I didn’t think it would be a problem with my

Brother. I didn’t think he and his wife would want to sleep in my mom’s bed themselves. 
At some point during the time at my mom’s house Satan pulled my husband to the side and told him that she had been making phone calls. She called the oil company and told them to continue oil deliveries at my mom’s house and she cancelled the newspaper service. When my husband told me I of course was pissed. That was not her place to do so and especially without consulting with me first. I was even more pissed at my brother for allowing it. I also noticed her and my brother were in my old bedroom. The same room where the safe was that I had caught them sneaking into. I walked in there with my cousin Nikki afterwards and as we were in there reminiscing about my teen years I noticed this white folder sitting on top of a basket that my mom had some old bills in. The folder was not there the day prior. I grabbed the folder and slipped it under my jacket. My cousin, my husband and I went outside to go ask the neighbors if they wanted food. We stopped at my husband’s car to look at the folder. Sure enough it was the contract for my mom’s annuity that named me and my brother as beneficiaries. Obviously my brother and Satan left it in that room, near all their belongings probably with the plan to take it with them when they left. They were all over the money. My mom’s body hadn’t even gone cold. 
We returned to the funeral home and the night viewing was ten times more overwhelming than the day one. I saw faces I hadn’t seen in years. My mom worked at Kmart for 20 years prior to getting a job with my Aunt, the year after my dad passed. A lot of her co-workers from there and her current job came. I was meeting some people for the first time and seeing people that I had known my whole life. 
Donna, my brother’s ex-fiancé also came that night. She was very upset to lose her friend. Donna had also never met Satan before. She had only seen her in pictures. I think it’s expected at anyone’s wake that people from your past are going to show up. Friends of mine that I haven’t seen or talked to in years came to pay their respects because at one point in life, we shared a bond and they wanted to do the right thing. I know if my ex-boyfriend was still alive he would’ve came as well. Him and I broke up a year prior to my dad’s passing and he showed up at my dad’s wake to pay his respects. We didn’t leave off on the best of terms but he still showed up. 
I was in the back corner of the room talking to a group of my mom’s friends from Kmart when Donna came walking up in a huff. She was talking a little loudly and was obviously very upset about something. She told us what had happened just moments before, only a few feet away from my mom’s coffin. Obviously her and her husband wanted to pay their respects to my brother and so Donna saw an opportune time where my brother was standing alone and Satan was distracted talking to her girlfriend. She walked up to my brother and as soon as she did so, Satan came flying over like a dart and hooked her arm around my brothers arm. Donna asked if she could speak with my brother privately for a moment so she could express her daughter, his ex-fiancé’s sorrow and let him know that she was sorry she couldn’t come. Satan snapped at her and told her she was being very rude and so Donna snapped back and told Satan she was the rude one and a minor argument ensued. My brother told Donna he had to respect his wife and they walked away. Donna was really fired up and talking really loudly and I tried to calm her down. She was cursing Satan and saying how much she hurt my mom and how she didn’t deserve to be there. While I emphatically agreed with everything she was saying, I didn’t feel it was the time or place. I kept trying to calm her and eventually I politely excused myself from the situation. 
It was about a half hour or so before the night ended and my cousin Nikki came up to me and informed me that my brother and Satan had left to go pick up their kid. Her along with a few others thought it was incredibly wrong of them both to leave before the viewing was over. My husband and I took separate cars for that very reason. I was not going to leave my moms wake until everyone else did. 
I went outside to get some fresh air and saw Donna’s husband out there smoking a cigar. I could tell he was very upset. I wanted to thank him for making all the food for us. He included a lot of extras that I didn’t order. He told me that when my brother was leaving he tried to go up and express his sorrow and my brother completely sniffed him. He asked what he personally did to be treated like that? He was always kind to my brother and treated him with respect. They had a very good relationship when my brother was with his ex. They went to baseball games together and hung out. I could tell it really affected him that my brother was so rude to him and donna. I felt terrible. That wasn’t the way we were raised. 
I went home that night completely exhausted. I saw my mom’s phone sitting on the counter and I picked it up and started to look through it. As I was looking, I noticed an email notification pop up on the top of the screen. I went to the email. It was an alert from one of the companies that she had mutual funds with. It said that someone had changed the primary email on the account. I took a screen shot of it and sent it to my phone. I knew I wasn’t the person who had made any changes to any of her accounts. The only people it could’ve been was my brother and Satan. I knew they had her phone that second last day in the hospital. Satan called me from it that morning. Later that day my mom’s friend text me to ask me what was going on with with my mom. She told me that she had called my mom’s phone that evening and Satan answered the phone but she didn’t understand what she was saying. I went into my mom’s call logs and on that very day I see a missed call from my brother at 5:48pm. Three minutes later, theres a missed call from my uncle Bob at 5:51pm. A half hour later was when my mom’s friend called and Satan answered. Obviously this told me what was going on. My brother and my Uncle Bob were looking for my mom’s phone and for what reason, I don’t know. They weren’t calling my mom to chat. She was obviously incapacitated and couldn’t answer. Besides that, they were both up at the hospital. There was no need to be calling her phone except to look for it and obviously it was handed off to Satan at some point. They were obviously fishing and snooping around for something. Perhaps they were looking for user names and passwords to her bank accounts and such. 
I will never know what they were up to but I knew they weren’t going to get away with them. I woke my husband up and showed him what I found. The next morning, I was going to confront them.
(To be continued in my next post).