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).