5:21 p.m. - 2005-08-17
The Trouble with Dad.
A nice woman from my father's church has written asking to meet with me, my father and a host of people concerned that my father cannot seem to meet his bills lately, and has apparently relied quite a bit on the church to help him out financially.  They have helped him quite a bit but they can't do it all, and are worried his house will be repossessed.  I guess we will have a sort of intervention.

I was wondering if it would come to this.

I have paid some of his bills, even stopped the house from being repossessed before with a massive chunk of dotcom earnings that my late Aunt Beatrice tried to make up for a piece at a time.

But he is an endless pit of need and financial mismanagement.  Dad could eat my every last meager asset and it wouldn't make a dent.  It is a nightmare.  A quagmire.  Quicksand.

I don't quite have 40 hours of work per week.  I have not started a 401K yet.  I can't seem to save much, living alone--I was gleeful to skip purchasing a bus pass this month, since the pool is closing temporarily for repairs and I can walk to my other job quickly.  I have lost 4 lbs in 3 weeks, doing so.  I look lean and hungry for the raise that neither one of my jobs can afford to give me.

Luckily, it is only an effect.  I am not hungry.

Just less than helpful in feeding another.

I am terribly sad that he will need to sell his equity in the house.  Sad, and relieved. 

I don't want the house and have told him so many times, but he is driven to have something to leave to me; driven like any 76-year-old man who's done a lot of ill in his life and wants to turn it around.  I have worried every day that he would refinance via some place with unscrupulous adjustable rates...the kind that apparently rise and rise until they cannot reasonably expect to be met, and the questionable entity takes the home with glee.  He can already barely afford to keep it now.

My mother must be turning in her grave.   My poor mother--she worked so hard to get us started on the house.  If she were alive this never would have happened.  Then again--she worked and worried herself to death.  Dad has just a little culpability there.  I never speak of it to him.  He knows it.  She was the toiling ant, and he was always the grasshopper who sang all summer.

There's no kindness in speaking of it now.  He spent 8 years virtually dead of sadness himself.  He has paid in grief for his crimes against her.  Crimes she allowed.

I am just so overwhelmed.  I have lived my live purposely without unnecessary complications, or obligations I am not fit to meet.  I know my limits.

I do not know how to handle this at all.

I am so grateful that I have people who want to help us, but for some reason I am unable to stop my eyes from a persistent slow leak.  Thank God it's time to leave work, so no one will catch me at it.

It is strange, but I am most panicky that these well-meaning people of the church will try to help Dad move into a place where he cannot have his dog.  If he loses his dog it'll kill his spirit.  He is already struggling with back pain and waiting for cataract surgery.  He is terrified of having his eyes cut up, but the diabetes and high blood pressure are managed quite well.  They are drops in the bucket compared to the pain and fear.  He needs that dog.

Perhaps the only option will ultimately be for me to give up my dear retro-shabby apartment--it was nice, the whole year alone--and rent a house with him.  He wouldn't want to.  He would have to leave my hometown, his church, his friends.  He wouldn't know anyone here.  And between the two of us, I don't think we would be able to afford a fenced yard in-city.  We would end up on the outskirts away from anyone we know. 

He wont do it. 

But what if we have to?

It's true that I have anticipated the possibility for years. It's just harder to accept than I imagined.

God, I feel like I can't breathe.

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