Family Life

I don't have any family to speak of and the family I do have are a lifelong burden. Since the semi truck accident in 2018, I have lost most contact with my friends. Like the song says, nobody knows you when you're down and out. When I'm dead, nobody is going to tell my side of the story, so here it is.
I grew up in Euclid, Ohio, a block away from Euclid High School and Memorial Park. My parents both lived in the Collinwood area. On the surface, it was a classic suburban American scenario of the 1950's. Most the people on the street were younger middle class families and a few retired folks. Dad went to work, Mom stayed at home. Most of the families had, at least, a couple kids.
When you're a kid, you don't remember all that much, but from old family photos, it looked like everything was normal. As I got older, I realized that my parents were not very honest and extremely self centered. My brother, sister and I were more like possessions than family. I'm not sure my parents wanted kids at all but since everyone else was having them, they felt the need to keep up and fit in.
I never talked with anything meaningful with my father. We never discussed anything. I learned what it means to be a man on my own. My mother was so self centered, if you were talking to her, the conversation was about her and only her. They were not very honest. Pretty confusing when your parents are punishing you for lying when you learned it from them. The only times my parents did things with me was to show people what great parents they were.
About the time I was in middle school, I started getting really bad grades in math. I never had any major academic problems before, but my parent's solution to most of my problems was to punish me until I did better. Despite being locked in my room, my grades did not get better. After weeks of punishment, someone at the school suggested I see a doctor. When I did, they found out I had a vision problem. I was not able to see the lessons written out by the teacher on the blackboard in the front of the classroom. I got glasses and my grades improved immediately.
About the same time, the family dentist informed my parents that I needed braces for my teeth. My father and mother never needed braces(or they weren't invented yet), so I didn't need them either. A lot of my friends had to wear dental hardware and they all have nice teeth. My younger brother and sister had to wear braces. They got braces and have nice teeth as well.
I was only a dumb kid, but I started having doubts if my parents really wanted me around.
In the summer, I usually left the house as early as I could. Having a bicycle was my ticket to freedom. Being able to go somewhere without my family was something I needed to do. My friends and I would hang out in a field at the end of the street. We rode our bikes around collecting bottles for the deposit, usually a few cents each. I would strap my towel to the handlebars and spend the day swimming at Memorial Pool. When I wasn't swimming, I would read books for hours on end at the Euclid Public Library.
My high school years were pretty rough. Growing up is tough enough, to have to do it on your own when you're just a teenager was brutal. My parents had zero interest in my life unless it cost them money. I was on the swim team for three years, my parents did not attend a single swim meet. If I wanted to go on a date, I had to bring the girl to them for an interview beforehand. My parents never let me use the family car anyway, so I did not go on a single date or attend any dances while I was in high school. Instead, I got a job at McDonalds several miles away, to which I had to ride my bike. Including riding home on my bike through not the best part of Cleveland at 11:00 PM.
By my senior year, things seemed about as difficult as it could possibly be. The Vietnam War was ripping the country apart and my family was no different. My father, being a total television junkie, was brainwashed by government propaganda and was convinced that commies were just down the street. He picked up the "anti-dirty hippie" rhetoric and used it on me daily. He did not care at all that his son could be drafted into the military, sent to Vietnam and be dead within the year.
I don't think the average person can understand what it's like to be conscripted into the military out of high school with a good possibility of death or being crippled when most teenager's biggest problem is a couple of zits. Communication with my parents was nonexistent, I was on my own at seventeen.
Despite all the problems, I had good grades in school and was on the varsity swim team. I was offered a swimming scholarship at the, then new, Cleveland State University. However, in the military draft lottery, I drew a number where the odds were good I would be drafted into the Army. Having known several older guys who had just returned from Vietnam, I knew I did not want to go into the Army, so I enlisted in the Marine Corps.
My parents were outraged I had enlisted in the Marines without their permission. They had no interest in the situation at that point, but at first, they refused to sign the paperwork because I was still seventeen. The Marine recruiter informed them I was going in the military one way or another, they signed off. They were not happy and kicked me out of the house a few months before I was set to graduate from high school.
I was sleeping in my friend's garages and eating at the school cafeteria. I started to miss school and hacked the school's new computer to show I was attending. When I was called to the principal's office, they told me they were going to call my parents. I told them I wasn't living at home. I remember them telling me I was the only student in the history of the school for being on the Deans List for good grades and Dean's list for getting kicked out of school at the same time.
No Senior Prom, no Letterman Awards, no Commencement Ceremony, no diploma. I slept in garages until my friends drove me to the airport, headed for Marine Corps Boot Camp at Parris Island, South Carolina.
When I graduated from boot camp, I stopped in Ohio to see my friends on the way to my first duty station in San Diego, CA. While I was there, my parents wanted to see me. I obliged, mainly because I wanted to get my stuff I left when they kicked me out of the house. When I got there, the American flag was out and my picture from Marine boot camp was front and center in the living room. I found out shortly thereafter, my friend who was in the Army stopped by on leave to find out my parents didn't even know my address. Because that made them look bad, out came the photo and flag. My brother had stolen most of my stuff to buy drugs. He proudly showed me his cool reel-to-reel tape player he stole from me. All the time I was in boot camp, my parents did not send me a single letter. Makes lonely military life about as lonely as it gets. I was starting to realize I was better off without the family.
After being discharged from the Marines, I returned to Cleveland and went to Cleveland State University for a couple years, then back to California, where I had been stationed in the Marines.

The happy family at Christmas 1972. I was a student at Cleveland State and working second shift at Pressure Castings. I was in and out in fifteen minutes, my friends probably waiting outside in the car. My sister, home from Kent State to pick up more money, looks like she burned one on the way over. My doper brother, still in high school, probably doesn't even know what day it is. My "family time" for the year. I would be heading back to California soon.
I lived in San Diego County for the next thirty five years with very little contact with my family. My brother, the druggie who had stolen all my stuff, came out for a few visits. I usually had roommates, so when he came to visit, especially with his sticky fingered wife, I had to tell them to lock everything up and not leave anything of value lying around. Proud family moments. Even though I owned my own business for more than twenty years, my parents could not tell you what I did for a living. I sent my father a gold pen for twenty years of being in business, he told me he didn't remember.
In return, I flew back to Ohio several times, including once to be my brother's best man/paint his house, help put a new roof on his garage and be his sponsor for AA after he was busted for DUI and drug possession. Nobody else would do it.
My main reason for returning to Cleveland was my mother. She had a number of health issues, each time calling me and requesting that I return "home" to help take care of her. Each time I did, even though I knew they would not do the same for me. My brother and sister in law, fifteen minutes away, would not help. One time, my sister in law took all the food out of my parent's freezer because she thought my mother "looked like she was going to die". My well to do sister would not lift a finger to help. I spent a lot of money flying back and forth to Ohio to help my parents who kicked me out of their house.
After one of my mother's health episodes, I convinced my parents to make a will. Not an easy job. They did not trust me, the person they keep calling for help, to make the will. They wanted my younger sister to draw up the will and be executor of their affairs. Fine with me. The less I have to do with this, the better.
My mother's next health emergency required yet another expensive last minute flight because she was supposedly "near death". Not the immediate crisis as described and I was tired of flying cross country for emergencies when my brother lived fifteen minutes away but wouldn't help. When I looked at my parent's will, I found out my sister had all of my parent's estate left to her instead of dividing everything between three siblings. I called the family attorney, he told me my sister told him that she was an only child.
After my mother's health crisis was over, I told my parents not to call me any more. I was spending my retirement savings on their problems while my brother did nothing and my sister could not be trusted at all.
Some time later, another call from my parents. They needed somebody to take care of them because they couldn't get around the house. They refused to hire a caregiver or consider moving to assisted living since both of them were in their nineties. I did not want be involved, but they had remade their will with me as executor, so I was involved whether I liked it or not.
If you belong to a relatively normal family, you may think that I am a terrible person for treating my mother and father like this. I have to point out that my parents are not angels. How they behaved with friends and strangers was completely different than the way they were at home. They did not treat me very well when I was a kid, kicked me out of the house as a teenager at a critical stage of my life and only called me when they needed something. By this time, I was on social security and the cost of caring for my parents was coming out of my retirement savings. On top of all that, my parents have never been honest with me and I couldn't really trust anything they said.
I still went back to help them again. If I didn't, they would probably find them dead for a couple weeks in the house with the doors locked. When I got there, both my parents were basically invalids, especially my mother. They had no food, the house was filthy. Remember, my brother and his wife live fifteen minutes away. I cooked, cleaned and ferried my parents to doctor's appointments for next two months. Being a caretaker is the hardest, most thankless job in the world and I had to do it for two people at the same time with no help.
I knew I could not do this for any length of time. I was sixty five years old, I didn't have enough to take care of three old people. My parents were happy now that they had a personal servant who paid for everything. I asked my father to help by cooking his own meals. He refused. I asked my mother to stop going down the basement stairs. She refused. After a couple months, well fed and the house clean, my parents told me they didn't like me "bossing them around" and wanted me to leave.
I flew back across the country and waited for the call I knew would come. It only took about a month before I got the call from my crying mother that they were starving to death and I had to come back and help them.
Another expensive last minute cross-country flight to Cleveland. This time, I told them either to to assisted living or take me off the will as executor. They would not accept the fact that as an old person myself, it was not possible to be a full time caretaker for two older people. It took months to get them into assisted living. Then another couple months of cleaning out the house they lived in for seventy years and making daily runs to the nursing home for something my mother wanted from the house. Again, no help from my sister or brother and his family who lived nearby.
One day, my parents told me they wanted me out of the house for the day. I left in the morning, but was curious to see what was going on, so I drove by the house a few hours later. My brother and his family were there. When I returned back to the house that evening, nearly everything in the house of any value was gone. My brother and his family, who never provided any assistance caring for my parents, with their permission, had taken everything of value from the house. They even went through my luggage and took my food out of the refrigerator.
When I questioned my parents, they told me they decided to leave all their property to my brother and his family. My parents bypassed the will by giving all their belongings to my brother's family before they died. I didn't want any of their stuff but I was hoping to recoup some of the thousands of dollars I'd spent caring for them for the past six months. Instead, my father emptied his bank safe deposit box of cash from his various tax free ventures and gave it to my brother's family before the nursing home found out about their undisclosed assets. Double crossed by my own parents.
My mother told me that I "was never part of the family because I didn't have any children to carry on her legacy". Nice thing to hear from your mother after six months of hell taking care of her. She told me she wanted me out of her house or she was calling the police. For most people, I assume hearing that from your mother would be terrible. For me, I was happy that it was over. No more interaction with these people ever again.
When my father died, only my grateful brother and his family showed up for the services. A friend told me about it. He also told me that my brother had told him that I stole money from my parent's bank account and from their home. Of course this was not true, I spent several thousand dollars caring for my parents with no help from my brother.
My brother, who stole my meager possessions to buy drugs when I went into the Marines, accused me of stealing from my parents. Since I am not a thief, I want to set the record straight.
My brother is a liar, thief and lifelong criminal. His involvement with drugs is the cause of many of the family's problems. Everything he has, house, cars, boats, motorcycles, kid's college educations and country club weddings come from selling drugs. Rarely had a job, never paid taxes, always paid cash. If you're a parent, what do you do when your kid is a drug addict and selling drugs? You teach him how to set up a phony construction business so it looks like a legal source of income.
That's not the worst of it. My parents were supplying my brother with high quality drugs. My parents were on a lot of medication. Technically, while I was taking care of them, I would describe them as drug addicts. My mother had a morphine pump. My father was addicted to Percocet. He told me he couldn't drive the car without it. Both of them had prescriptions for Oxycontin and Oxycodone. They would receive hundreds of pills at a time for $1. I sent letters to my parent's lawyer and doctor, that were ignored, there were too many drugs.
My parents gave my brother drugs to stay connected with my brother's children. Their only grandchildren, they viewed themselves as "partial parents" for raising the children while my doper brother and his wife partied the years away. My mother would have my brother come over to fix some little thing or drop something off, she would leave a bottle of pills on the kitchen counter. When my brother left, the pills were gone. This happened several times while I was there. My brother never stopped to help with caretaking duties, just to pick up pills. With Oxycontin pills going for $30-50 each on the street, always a good payday.
I saw my father reading articles about the opioid crisis in America at the time, especially around Cleveland, and I'm sure that he knew that I knew what they were doing. My mother offered me her wedding ring, something my sister-in-law badly wanted, if I wouldn't say anything about the drugs. My family was literally part of the cause of the opioid crisis. How many lives did those pills destroy? When my parents left for the nursing home, I flushed thousands of pills, no doubt worth thousands of dollars, down the toilet. My brother and parents were outraged. I believe that's why my brother's family ransacked my parent's house before they kicked me out for the final time and why my brother has spread rumors of me stealing money from my parents.
When I was in a terrible accident in 2018, I never heard from any of my family. Those thousands of dollars that I took out of my retirement savings to pay for my parent's care sure would have come in handy. If I had the thousands of dollars in cash my brother said I had stolen from them, I probably would have been in a lot better shape.
I'm not a perfect person, but with my family, I look like a saint. I'm the only family member who hasn't stolen anything, cheated, or double crossed anyone from my family. I never wanted to have a family myself because there was a possibility that I would be just as bad as a parent as my mother and father or brother and sister-in-law. Even if I was the perfect parent with the perfect family, they would have still been exposed to my parents and brother's family, I would not subject anyone to that.