28 August 2013
Wednesday


Well, today is the 28^th, the day my phone bill is due. If it is not paid today the amount is increased by a late fee almost equal to the bill itself. My long term income from a family trust fund has been withdrawn. You see it's not mine, I receive a portion as a gift at this point. I have been the beneficiary of this gift for several years now. Suddenly this gift has been diverted. The portion I have been given has been sent elsewhere. I'm am not sure why, no one has ever spoken to me about this. I have my suspicions as to why, it has to dowith my youngest brother, who has earned the nickname William Wormtongue. No one is saying any thing on that point as well. Meanwhile as my possessions have slowly been taken from me gradually, I am left with less and less. This cell phone is just about the last thing I have left. Oh sure technically I don't need a phone, living under such close scrutiny and care (B.S.). But there are those occasions that occur more often than they should, when I have a huge headache and I ring for the CENA to request a pair of Excedrin. And over an hour goes by and no CENA comes by, or even if/when the CENA arrives, gets the message and the nurse takes more than an hour to bring the medication. Usually someone is busy or they forgot to followthrough. That's fine, but I don't want to be pain ridden for too long due to someone else's difficulties. That is when I use my cell phone. I call the main number to the facility. At night the second and third floor nursing desks alternate answering the phone. When my call is answered, usually quite quickly too, I ask for the third floor nursing station, when I get there I identify myself and state that I did request some Excedrin an hour or more ago.


The other day after using the adult sized Potty chair in my room and having been put back in bed, I realized after both of the CENAs left the room that my call light had been left hooked to the commode, out of reach. There was no way I could wiggle or stretch enough to get that call signal. I used my phone to call the front nurses desk to indicate that I needed to have that light put back within reach. Otherwise when I had fallen asleep even if the night shift did come in, rare sometimes, they might never have seen my call light fixed out of reach and thus unavailable. I do use the phone for outside calls, darn few of them sometimes. I have so many rollover minutes from unused time that I have paid for that I doubt the phone company will not be too worried about me running up a large bill. But part of the phone bill is paying off the phone itself.


I have always prided myself in playing the game by the rules, that includes paying the bill on time. Now the funding that I have always been able to count on eventually to even pay the phone bill has been redirected. Each brother now gets half of what I used to get. One brother, William Wormtongue uses words to confound and confuse people, for which he always seems to benefit, when I told him that I understand he is receiving half of the funding that I formerly received, could I please have some? He indicated that it came in a check with his name on it so as far as he is concerned its his money. As such he spent it all, there is none to give.


My other brother said that he would get the half to me, but we have been whittling down the best way to get that done.


Meanwhile the phone bill has been drawing closer. I told my father that now that the funding has been diverted away from me, the help he has offered to help me with, is now needed, the phone bill, its tendency to double when late was discussed. Like a trooper he stepped right up and told me to give him the bill, he would take care of it.


Dad, they don't give bills out through the mail any more. It is expensive to do that and they are trying to get away from that. They send me an electronic notice of the billing and I in return authorize them to withdraw an amount from my bank account equal to the bill. EXCEPT THAT I HAVE ONLY SEVENTEEN DOLLARS IN MY ACCOUNT. The input has been cut off. Remember?


Next week I remind him again that the phone bill is a week closer to being due. He asks me if I. heard about the new alternator the Beemer needed, $2000. Yes, I heard about that last week. Do you recall that my phone bill is due? Yes, Just send me the bill. Dad, we went through this last week, there is no bill to give you. Alright I'll stop by the bank, not tomorrow, the next day. Later I check my account, no change. This last Saturday he stops in for a visit, unannounced as usual. He appeared at my door, I invited him in. How are you doing? A huge headache, since this morning.


[Long pause] Did you get some money into my account? There was some answer about not having enough time or the car didn't work or something to serve as an excuse. Mostly what I got was “No” and fetching for some story to buy me off for the moment. More than two weeks of me bringing this to his attention and still yet no movement. I went through the drill again as I wasn't sure he was really understanding the situation. We spoke of other things and then he announced that he had to go, his need for a nap was coming on. Maybe that was the problem, maybe his napping reorganized his memory and after the nap he had no recollection of the earlier part of the day. He said I'll see you tomorrow and left. Tomorrow? He never comes two days in a row. Tomorrow …?


I semi waited all day Sunday. Not a shadow nor a peep. I figured yesterdays comment was a misspeak. During sunday I made a screen image of my bill and some discussion about what the various parts were signifying and what they meant. How to read the bill and how I authorize payment. Then I indicated that I had opened up a PayPal account to make it as easy as possible for anybody to send money to me without having to go to the bank. I sent the PayPal URL and encouraged him to look into the entire site to become familiar with it. Now my father is not very adept at using the computer. Mostly he barely gets it turned on. His wife opened an email account for her and one for him. He never uses his so most transmissions to him go by way of her. Lately it doesn't matter if I address my posts to him or both of them he never mentions them. I hate to think the she may be filtering his mail, but he just isn't responding the way he used to.


So today my phone bill came due, the money has all been withdrawn from coming my way for three quarters now, I have had no income since January, my account is now the lowest since I was twelve yars old, my brother from out of town did send some money but it has to sit in PayPal's possession for a couple of days before it becomes accessible to me.


My youngest brother hasn't seen me since early May, when he came with my father. He has called two times, two weeks ago and a month before that. Each call he does not think enough to leave a message. The call on the 24^th of July I called him back two days later and asked what was up, he had called? He said that he wanted to see how I was doing? That was the last mention or query about me. The entire rest of the phone call was about him, what he was doing, the war he was having with his neighbor about the fence between them, about his efforts to get a permit from the city to erect a new fence. How strange another neighbor has been acting, blah blah blah.


I figure that as far as my local family is concerned, I'm already dead. My brother has manipulated and maneuvered everyone so that he is always the beneficiary. He was put into position of Power of Attorney for the purposes of selling my house. Then when my father is out of town, he reverses and does not do any of the acts we decided to do about my house. He called me at the first nursing home and told me that I had a lot of “junk”. Then proceeded to throwout a lot of it in a dumpster that was dropped in my driveway. Then he felt that he didn't want to carry the rest to a rental locker so he had a bright idea, he was going to call his friend the auctioneer, who had a truck, and he would take everything away for free. I kept trying to tell him NO that some things were irreplaceable others I wanted to gift to friends.he kept raising his voice and talking fast so he wouldn't have to hear me.


So in most senses I am now dead. I have a heartbeat but I have no voluntary controll of most of my body, I spend most of my time supine or in a wheelchair. My intellect and sensory systems are not impacted, but many people don't know what to think. I get the impression that my brother has been interpreting this for others to his own benefit. I have given him the benefit of the doubt for far too long, I have been ripped off, stolen from and misrepresented. He is poison to be around. He is not worth having around and has no intention of making this right, but can only see continuing in the same fashion that he has been doing for the last 35 years. My father seems to be reaching the point in his disease process where he is no longer up to understanding things enough to make up his own mind. The ability to follow through clearly does not seem to show forth any more. Any time he shows up will be just a visit. I don't think the will or capability to do any more seems to have passed.


As far as any body else is concerned I don't need anything else, I'm being taken care of just fine – – at the lowest common denominator, the best care that any warehouse could offer.


It seems that no one has any feeling in the matter. They just go through the elements of their day. The social worker says in a very chipper manner that he would like to talk with me sometime, says he thinks it would be interesting. Between meetings, sometime, although he doesn’t know when ….


I guess I'm on my own. Its strange when you are on your own, and every one is in a hurry to nowhere, and people think they want to be with you, to understand, to aid and comfort. But they just can't meet you, where you are. They think they are being with you. They are where they “think” you are, which is often very faraway.


As usual I don't think many people regularly read this. I check the blog records to see how much it is accessed. Doesn't matter. I write mostly as an exercise to let go, to not have to always carry the load. While sometime this may sound like a sad exercise, which it is, I am also relieved of always having to re explain to another. This just makes me boring to be around. I don't want that to happen.

 I'm feeling much better now.