jerzgirl

It’s hard to believe the year is already half over (almost).  It just doesn’t seem like this much time has lapsed.  Got up early today (for me) and spent time online (what else is new) and then couldn’t stay awake for some reason.  Laid down and woke up a couple hours later - it was already after 1PM!  Geez!

Then, I got a phone call from Mom’s lawyer telling me the life insurance proceeds check was at their office, did I want to come pick it up or have them mail it.  I went to pick it up.   Yeah.  It looks like the light of Mom’s life got 35% of that as well.  Unbelievable!!  But, because of privacy laws, even though I’m a beneficiary, I’m not allowed to know how the proceeds were distributed.  So, even though it’s almost exactly 65% of the original insured amount that I received, I can only assume my cousin got the other 35% just like he got of the estate.  I can’t believe my mother cut my kids out of the will!!  But, I have no idea whether she changed her beneficiaries on her life insurance or whether my cousin did on his own, since he had financial power of attorney and didn’t have to ask her before making any changes.  It doesn’t matter to him that even in retirement he’s making six figures while I have no income other than the proceeds of the estate.  He’ll suck every last dime he’s allowed to get.  He even had the nerve to ask me for the antiques I’d been willed (I was actually surprised she didn’t get rid of them first.)

I’m happy to have the money, without a doubt.  But, it still hurts like crazy that my mother literally changed her will five months after Dad died, took my kids out and put my cousin in their place.  We have always been told that we would share in the inheritance because my parents knew I didn’t have a lot to give my kids.  That’s how they set up the wills.  I’m just angry, hurt, bewildered, and full of confusion about what happened in my mother’s head that would make her do this - and more than a little disgusted that my cousin would agree to it and then actually keep something he knew wasn’t morally his!!  I mean, he’d just inherited half of his mother’s estate a year earlier!!  I’m an only child and my kids don’t get anything???

Let me tell you - my thoughts are so jumbled and erratic right now - like all my circuits are firing at once and don’t know where to go.  I loved my mother; I was her caretaker by choice so that she wouldn’t have to give up everything to go into a nursing home.  We butted heads, but that had long been our mother-daughter dynamic.  It wasn’t something that would simply vanish now that we were both older.  That still didn’t mean I didn’t care and didn’t want what was best for her.  Yet, she knew my cousin’s relationship with her was fragile.  She told my daughter one time that she didn’t want me to do things for her because she was afraid if she did, my cousin would no longer come around.  In other words, the only way she’d get to see him was if she had work for him to do.  She knew this, yet still did what she did.  It was like she was trying to buy his love.  She failed.  According to her neighbors, Mike didn’t care about her - he only cared about his home in Virginia and getting back to it.  That’s why he arranged for a friend to buy Mom’s house as soon as she died.  That’s why he didn’t try to sell for the full market value (as he should have done being executor).  All he cared about was getting out from under the responsibility so he could go back to Virginia.  That’s what he told the neighbors.  And, then Mom makes HIM trustee over MY MONEY!!  Glory be to heaven - I get to have involvement with this uncaring, selfish man until one of us dies.  I’m so happy.  I hope she is as well - I really hope she knows what he’s really like now so that she can hold on to that knowledge for eternity.  Does that sound mean?  Yeah - I even feel guilty about it.  But, not so guilty that I’ll retract it.  I’m not wishing her to go to Hell.  She doesn’t deserve that.  She was one of the most loved and respected people I’ve ever known in my life.  But, somewhere along the way, she hooked her emotions to Gary Michael’s star and that’s all she could see.  She didn’t see me anymore - not really.

Yeah, I’m feeling out of sorts right now.  Put upon; ripped off, if you will; virtually abandoned.  I even feel like I’ve been stabbed in the back from the grave.  I just don’t understand what my mother was thinking.  I just don’t.  I even talked to my dad’s sister who was shocked.  She even told me that BOTH Mom and Dad had told her the estate was to be split between my kids and me.  What happened to make her decide to cut the kids out and bring Mike in?  She was giving things away left and right, but if I said something about wanting them, her response would be “Why?  Why would you want this??  I’m not giving it to you!”  What had I done to her?  She even sold all her jewelry a few years back to be sure I didn’t get either of her engagement rings (she’d been married once before).  What in the world set her off??

Could something my aunt recently told me be the clue?  My aunt said something about my grandmother telling her how she understood why I had sold the ring she gave me.  I said, “What ring?”  She said, “The diamond ring.  She said she understood why you would have to sell it to put food on the table for the babies.”  Now, here I’m sitting, hearing this, knowing that at one time my grandmother had gone off at my mother about me for some stupid thing that Mom would never ever tell me what after which Mom didn’t care if my grandmother lived or died, she lost so much respect for her in that instance.  I still to this day don’t know what my grandmother said about me, but Mom said it was horrible.  Even my father apparently defended me when he learned what she had said.  Then my grandmother tells my aunt this and I’m sitting there just in shock!!  You see, I NEVER sold that ring.  Not EVER.  It had been her engagement ring in 1922 and she gave it to me for my 16th birthday.  I used it when I got married because we couldn’t afford a ring.  It didn’t matter to me - I got to wear it and I was happy about it.  

While I was pregnant, I began retaining a lot of water, so I had to take all my rings off (I had several, my wedding band, the engagement ring, several silver rings).  I was living with my in-laws at the time and my sister-in-law showed me where I could put them that no one would know about.  Yeah - the diamond ring disappeared within a month as did several of the silver rings.  I saw my mother-in-law wearing the silver rings (she claimed they were hers), but I never found the diamond.  I had assumed my stepdaughter had stolen it - but it turns out my sister-in-law stole it because my now ex-husband found it and got it back only to have my daughter play with it and his sister steal it back again from my daughter.  That ring was stolen BEFORE I had any kids!!!  I NEVER sold it to put food on the table for ANYONE!!!  I never had to.  I always had a way to get food.  It was never a problem.Now I’m wondering just who she sold that pack of lies to and how many people in my family actually believed it!  Could that be why my mother didn’t think I should have any heirlooms?  It just makes me sick - and is giving me a headache just thinking about it because I’m tensing up so much writing about it.  I can feel the muscles behind my jaw and in front of my ears just tightening while the pain increases above my brow line over my eyes.

Anyway, I guess I’d better explain the money lost now that I’ve gone off on a tangent after the money in hand part of this.  I had a bank envelope with about $200 in it over the weekend.  I had it on the table next to the couch where I pretty much stayed all weekend working on the computer and watching television.  I paid for my lunch that was delivered on Saturday and remember putting the change back in the envelope.  I haven’t found it since.  I have no earthly idea where that envelope is.  My daughter wasn’t home all weekend and I never left the apartment and didn’t have guests, so I’m really at a loss to explain where it could have gone.  It’s maddening to have something happen that you KNOW only YOU could have done and not remember one iota of it.  Not to mention, a wee bit frightening.  I don’t even know where to begin looking.  I covered all the places I remember being to no avail.  I just can’t find it.  I don’t want to lose it - it doesn’t matter that I got a check today.  I can use all of it for one expense or another.  I can’t afford to lose it.  As I’ve already established, I am not independently wealthy!!  So, that frustration is running under the surface while this newly resurrected one weighs heavily on my heart.

I’m just feeling so - how to put it - lost.  Empty.  Maybe even shut out?  I don’t know.  I’ll probably feel better tomorrow, but right now, this has all taken a toll on me inside.  And, how can I explain this to someone and have them understand how I feel without their thinking I’m just asking for sympathy?  What I’d really like is answers.  And, I don’t think I’ll ever have any.

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