Now that the end of Asshat's life was nearing, he was dealing more and more with his own death and the afterlife. I do not mean that on a philosophical level. I mean the actual details of what was to happen after his death. Who was to inherit what? What was to be done with his remains? Where was the memorial to be held?

During these days in the house there was lots of idle talk about these things. Magpie was particularly excited to discuss what she planned to sing at the memorial ceremonies. It was sickening, like watching a vulture circle with ever increasing pleasure eyeing an animal as it weakens, but struggles on. But it was Magpie who shared that Asshat had always wanted to be buried on the grounds of the farm.

The "farm" was actually a palatial, but unfinished house. Asshat had built it himself and while I thought some of the design features were....unfortunate and odd, they were definitely his. It was to have been his magnum opus. Still, his house was unfinished. On the top floor, there was one room that was barely rudimentary, and the basement had a completely non-functional bathroom. Other parts of the house, as I looked at it in the sun, desperately needed maitenance. Eaves were sagging, wood was rotting, paint was chipped an entirely faded. I thought worse than his premature death was that all of his efforts had come to this. The house, as I examined it on this bright summer day, looked absolutely pathetic. He wouldn't even have the time to build the chapel where he wanted to be buried on the property. There wasn't even time for him to fulfill his dying wish.

I sat on the porch and looked out at the horizon. Asshat had bought all the land surrounding the house so he had a completely uninterrupted view from absolutely any vantage point at the house. Man tries to control his environment, his destiny, and he comes to this. Dying in a house with apathetic relatives with even one of his enemies now more of any ally than those who should have loved him, his house unfinished, his death wish not able to realized. While Euripides once wrote, "A bad beginning makes a bad ending," I think Sophocles was more accurate when he wrote "Count no man happy until he is dead." Of course, it's very difficult to count the dead as happy under any circumstances.

Labels: dying, existential crisis, family

The following day Asshat's sister, Magpie, was to arrive. Magpie has the type of nasal twang for a voice that's like a diamond drill-it can cut through anything including your sanity in a matter of seconds. It's the way I imagine H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu to sound, that is if Cthulhu was a shrewish, invasive idiot without even the vaguest concept of tact and appropriateness. I kinda expect that even the Elder Ones have better manners than the Magpie, as to talk to her for even minutes is to make you want to run screaming for Innsmouth and all of its horror as a welcome alternative.

If her voice wasn't enough, she personifies one of the truths I realized quite early in life: the people who most want to advertise their intelligence are usually the stupidest people around. In this case, Asshat, her brother, at this point could barely be heard when he spoke if you were more than a few feet from him. Often he would yell for my mother, who was in the neighboring room, and she wouldn't hear him. My mother and I decided to leave Magpie with Asshat so 1 they would have private time together to talk 2 we could go pick up some respiratory gear.Before we left Magpie, who likes to announce every five mintues that she graduated from an ivy league college, stopped my mother to ask if she should check in on her own brother from time to time. My mother was confused, "What do you mean check in?" "Well I wanted to do some work on the computer." The computer was in the basement on the other end of the voice. Luciano Pavaroti couldn't have yelled loud enough from the living room to be heard in the basement computer room nevermind a guy who could barely talk thanks to lung cancer. In this case, Asshat, her brother, could barely be heard when he spoke if you were more than a few feet from him. Often when he would yell for my mother, who was in the neighboring room getting something for him, and she wouldn't hear him.The "work" that Magpie was referring to was the VOLUNTEER work she did helping to rescue beagles in Florida.

Now, I do not in anyway disparage people who save animals. My cat is a rescue, my mom's cats are rescue cats. HOWEVER if you have the choice between spending time with your dying brother and trying to help save animals over the internet, I'm gonna say go with your brother. I'm an only child fer chrissakes and even I understand that time with your brother is short. Not to mention that the two aren't mutually exclusive. My mother and I were coming home in a few hours. I refuse to believe she couldn't put it off for three hours. But in truth, she just didn't want to spend time with her brother despite her presence there.

However, where I would slapped this stupid bitch upside the head and said "Listen, go sit with your brother until we come back." My mother patiently explained that Asshat couldn't talk that loudly and needed help with things like walking to the bathroom and COULD NOT CALL FOR HELP so SHE HAD TO STAY IN THE ROOM. (She did not punctuate the sentence with "idiot" or "bitch" as I would have.) She grudgingly went to sit with her brother.

Before we left my mother told Magpie to be sure BE SURE to give Asshat his 3 pm pills. She told her twice and even put a note in front of a little dish filled with the appropriate pills that said "3 pm!" We gave her exactly one thing to do.

Did she do it?

No. She forgot to give him his meds which included pain medication, something he absolutely needed. I mean seriously, one thing ONE THING. Mind you my mother was the one who was giving him IV fluids, emptying spitoons filled with bloody phlegm, even draining his lungs. And this alledgedly intelligent human being couldn't remember to give him clearly labeled pills? I mean did she think the meds were OPTIONAL? Did she not get that giving a terminal lung cancer patient his medications on time is important? And if she didn't get it, why the hell not?

Later, Asshat's son, Gekko, arrived as well. We were all sitting in the living room chatting, Asshat was in the middle of saying something, when suddenly he coughed up bile. The son and the sister RAN OUT OF THE ROOM.

Let me say that again. They fled.

Being me, I thought that they had run to get paper towels or something useful. It never occurred to me that they had just run out. My mother and I cleaned Asshat up. I took the bile soaked tissues and walked into the kitchen, which is where I found his son just standing there.

Growing up disabled, it does something to you. You learn quickly that the horror of what has happened to you is not being trapped in a body that's the enemy, but how people treat you because of it. The people who should be there for you, abandon you. They make excuses not to come to the hospital. To avoid asking how you are. Or to just vanish until things are "better." To leave you to crutch home, 5 blocks in the rain, from the hospital alone. To expect you to act after a 5 day emergency hospitalization that everything is fine. The people who have benefitted from your empathy. The people who should have your back. The people who should understand. They are the ones who generally disappoint and on an epic level.

The converse rule is that the people who come through are generally those you don't expect. Some random person you barely know who sends you flowers or an encouraging email or stops and asks if you need help. Unfortunately, those people are far outnumber by those who lack basic humanity.

I threw out the tissues and washed my hands. I knew the worst part of what had just happened wasn't the lack of control over his own body. It was knowing he had become revolting to his own sister and son. To know that what had happened to him had so frightened them they had fled the room. I know what's like to see that horror in the eyes of others and that is why I acted like everything was normal. I went back into the room where he apologized profusely for what had happened. He apologized-as if he had some control.

My mother and I told him he had no reason to apologize, and of course he didn't. It wasn't like he wanted to barf up phlemg. The son finally came back into the room. The conversation started to resume a bit, but there was a problem.

Where was Magpie?

Five, ten, fifteen minutes went by and there was no sign of Magpie. Finally I went into the kitchen to get a refill of my iced tea and that's when I saw her. She was in the back garden pulling weeds and talking on the phone. She ran out of the room and didn't even care enough to check on whether her brother was OK. She just decided that weeding and chatting was more important than her brother's feelings in the same way she decided that those beagles were more important than her brother's welfare.

I have to be honest with you that incident so upset me that I was spitting mad for a week. I have no idea how a person can care so little about the welfare of a fellow human being, nevermind a sibling. As I said, I hated the man and yet I found their behavior so obherent that I literally couldn't talk about anything else for a week. It is, to me, a perfect distillation of how human beings generally lacking humanity especially when it's the most important for them to have some.

Karma, however, will pay them back as someday they will know what it's like to have their body fail and their family flee. It's what my father told me all those years ago: The one great common denominator of all humanlife is pain. If you ever wish great pain on someone, you only have to do one thing: wait. And so eventually their apathy will come back to haunt them in the form of those they will expect to support them. They will then know the horror of causing family members to flee, having family members hide from their needs with invented important tasks, and having family think your basic needs are unimportant or more importantly they don't care to protect your feelings in the least.

Personally, I would like it better if people could actually act like human beings, but having lived with disability for so long, I know I might as well wish for a hot tub filled with blue Kool-Aid and a calorie free Swiss chocolate. But will I take plain ole vengeance? You bet I will. And the truth is, if I ended up seeing them sick I probably couldn't run out on them anymore than I could run out on Asshat. Luckily, I'm sure other family members will have that covered.

Labels: apathy, cancer, death, family, lung cancer

While sitting outside waiting for the Doberman to fetch me coffee, Abe Vigoda came shuffling up the sidewalk. I had watched Barney Miller with my Dad when I was young and was scheduled to see his brother AKA Uncle Schmendrick later in the day about the trust my father set up before he died. Seeing Vigoda, who I had seen on Broadway years ago in Arsenic and Old Place (he played Johnny-a serial killer), I thought it must be a good omen for the rest of the day.

I had scheduled lunch at a nice steak restaurant right by Penn Station in order to make things easier for my uncle. Now Uncle Schmendrick has raised literally thousands of dollars for children in Darfur. He has donated, by now, years of his life treating patients all over the world and still, well in his seventies, practices pediatrics. And so I feel incredibly guilty for the story I am about to relate to you, but I will. It simply proves that Michel de Montaigne was correct when he declared that human beings are not consistent. A brave man may commit acts of great cowardice. A benevolent may can commit acts of cruelty. And a man who is willing to help children in other countries may drive me to homicide out of a feud as old as I am.

My father hated his family. I grew up with barely any contact with my paternal grandmother and my paternal grandfather died so young I actually forgot his name. (I thought it was Saul, but it was actually Samuel.) As for my uncle and his children, I met them maybe once that I remember. And so for most of my childhood, it was as if these people simply didn't exist. My mother was more than happy about that situation. My father's family, despite her conversion, was less than thrilled with her, and she was perfectly happy to let them and their dim opinions of her to be kept at a distance. Furthermore there was hostility between my uncle and my mother which stemmed from a single incident. When I was in the hospital with cancer, my uncle in a typical doctorish move tried to override my mother's decision to hold off on a very dangerous treatment. Convinced, as a pediatrician, that he knew better, he brushed her aside. Mere Lapin threw such a fit that until I was discharged every decision had to be signed off by her, even if my father had already approved it. My mother never forgave Uncle Schmendrick for this behavior.

After my parents divorce, my father suddenly immersed himself in his family. He dragged me on visits to see my now adult cousins, but I wasn't interested in these strangers. I was in high school, and I had other things to worry about other than these random idiots from NJ with whom I shared my blood and that was all. By then my father was well on his way to being institutionalized and spending time with him was unpleasant and strained. To add these strange people into the equation only made me more distant. If it wasn't for the trust set up upon my father's death, I don't think I would have ever contacted them after my father's death.

Before my father's death he set up a trust of which I was the beneficiary and my uncle the executor. My mother pondered the decision upon my father's death. Marv was crazy, but he was never ever stupid. The move had to have some purpose. On the other hand, I was only 19 at the time. My father hated my mother and he needed someone to be executor. Who else was there other than his brother? The brother who blamed my mother for the death of my father. As if she hadn't tried to save him. As if anyone could. As if my father wasn't the one to take himself off the heart donor's list. As if. As if. As if.

And yet, I know from my experience with my father that people believe what they want to believe. And so Uncle Schmendrick continued to think of my mother as the goyische pariah who killed Marv. And she continued to think of him as the presumptuous prick who tried to kill her child. And I continued to wish that my adoption papers would suddenly surface.

Uncle Schmendrick arrived at the lovely steak restaurant in an old t-shirt and track pants that highlighted his old wiry Jew physique. I suddenly knew, for the first time, what it was to be stared at for being "Those Jews." We walked amongst tables of quiet business meetings whose occupants stared and wondered. Uncle Schmendrick first delivered a dissertation on his, indeed, very noble charity work. To be completely honest, he has risked his life many times over to help children. He deserves praise for that. He then continued on about my cousins, two married with children. One even had a child named after my father. My father. She has a child named after my father. I have a killer rabbit. (The child's name, incidentally is Maya, which if memory serves means illusion. Very fitting.)

I ordered a second glass of wine.

Finally the discussion about the trust surfaced. He revealed a complete lack of real knowledge about how the trust worked. I explained how the trust was set up, how it worked. This man, who claimed to be watching over the trust closely, knew nothing of what I spoke. He didn't know what would happen to the trust if I died. And this man, who years ago asked to be taken off as executor of the trust, whose request I now said I would grant, then decided, based on an old feud, to question me. He didn't want to be executor, but he didn't want an independent executor. He wanted things to change, but he had in his mind the way that he wanted them to change"gradually." When I told him with how the trust was set up it wasn't possible, he suddenly shifted gears. He was worried that I would be taken advantage of, the money would vanish, even though of course HE didn't want it. His children were well off, he didn't want the money. He kept emphasizing even within families how these things happen.

These things, of course, being that my mother would embezzle the money.

After repeating himself several times that he was worried about hanky panky, he said he would call the lawyer about what I told him. The lawyer who wouldn't even speak to me until I spoke with Uncle Schmendrick. The lawyer Uncle Schmendrick insisted I keep on. Of course, old boys chatting with other old boys about what this little girl couldn't possibly understand.

And suddenly I knew why Marv had made Uncle Schmendrick executor of his trust. To drive me crazy....from long distance. And 14 years after his death, his brilliant plan was finally working.

But I didn't survive all those years with Whose Who in Mental Illness just let some philanthropic schmendrick keep me from what is rightfully mine. And the truth is his children will never get that money, I'll spend every dime of it first. I'll buy an apartment in Paris. I'll adopt a little Chinese baby (somebody call Angelina's adoption lawyer!).

So I was polite. I paid for lunch. Again people stared as we walked out. This angular stereotypical whiny older Jew being followed by the littlest ball of hate in the world. We said good bye outside and I commenced to call my mother and reassure her that Uncle Schmendrick was still a spectacular asshat and I had more asshatery from him to look forward too. I have no intention of ever seeing him again.

And now I lie in wait for the the battle to begin.

Labels: death, family, father, idiocy, money

Labels: break up, christmas, depression, family