Family delusions

I'm guilty of deluding muself until just recently. I'm not alone.

Grandma deluded herself that she was a business woman. Yet, when she turned over the insurance agency and home loan, they were severely gutted of money. She had covered up M.A.'s infidelity, her own affairs and embezzlement and indiscretions. Her mental incompetence upon retiring at age 77 demonstrated her collapse and downfall when her partial stories and ramblings demonstrated it until she died.

Mom was no better. Like grandma, she rumbled about Arian ancestry, the Von Kelp coat of arms and other German pride issues, claiming I was the heir to a disbanded barony. As she ahed, her quirks got more obsessive and she tried numerous times to locate the love letters from Wes. We discovered them after mom died, and upon reading them, learned the sordid epic of her life long affair. Her lies and delusions caught up with her.

My delusions started early, with the brainwashings of German supremacy, the Von Kelp barony and other family fantasies told me from a very young age. When I took over for dad, I began to realize that I enjoyed physical work over collegiate pursuits.

I should have never wasted money and  my life in college. I've NEVER been college minded. Looking back, i should have bolted in 1975, when i spent several prior as well as successive  months working the trades.... carpentry, electrical, masonry, plumbing. I felt useful. In college classes, no matter the subject, I felt like I was wasting my time.

Had I left in 1975, I may have continued my drumming to make money as well. Neither happened. I was delusional, thinking I would follow in collegiate footsteps. Fact is, I never had the guy's yo follow my heart, but instead, deluded myself that I was a self deluded clerk

I've GOTTA shake this feeling...

Sometime between 11/17 and 11/21, Linda Shepherd died. According to her friend, Patti, she went to the hospital and had a massive heart attack while they were working on her. Her sister posted on facebook that they already said goodbye to her, indicating the service is already over.

Last year, it was Mitch Piazza. It took me weeks to get over his loss.

Cheryl's departure affects me still as well. However, hers was the first of my generation. People like Cheryl's dad, aunt Ann and Uncle Julius are situations we expect..
 age-wise.

Soon, I expect more as so many if my friends are of that era. Its a sobering thought.

Reality of Dreams

Last night, I had the most vivid of dreams containing two people, that in life, I know to be dead. One, the grandson if my first employer. The other, my mom.

I was working in an office situation, laid out similar to my first title employer, and DCIII was there espousing his latest cooking ideas, as real as he ever was, even down to his pronouncing of my name. It was vivid as reality, and a thought just occurred... he had been there before when he and his brother financed the restaurant.

Later that fay, after returning home, I was describing my day to mom before heading out for the evening. Funny thing... I lived at mom's for the time period I worked at that title company.

Wild dream indeed, and I'm sure further contemplation will reveal some form of conclusions that drew all three together...

Theoreticals

Seventeen years ago, I underwent therapy due to the failures of two successive relationships, and alienation of my kids

Even my family was against me on many levels.  Seventeen years later, their actions reveal that nothing has changed. Time changes people and ideas, sometimes. In this case, it did not


This holiday, I'll not venture forth to see them.

Flashbacks

From time to time, I remember bits and pieces from my past. Sometimes it's distant past; others are recent past.

One such flashback surrounds the mid 70's. I had gone to Tri C to appease my parents. 3 years and several changes in major fields of study later, I found myself at B-W, again to appease my parents as well as my Aunt and Uncle.

It was the same Aunt and especially Uncle who were very supportive of my drumming and bought me my drum set.

Dad's eventual life course was already charted: after a lifetime of smoking, drinking continued and he gained weight. His pulmonary edema started in 1976 when he pushed the car in winter. So his course was already set.

Mom, being an enabler, kept dad boozed up at his own wishes. He wasn't working. Mom's view was that I was destined to be the man of the house and from 1968 when dad had his heart attacks, until 1981 and my marriage, I was there to be at mom's beckon call.

Afterwards, a marriage, 4 kids, dad's death and the estate work, and mom's house maintainance were my destiny clear through mom's death in 2007 and the house foreclosure in 2009, weighed very heavily as my second job.

Since then, failed relationships come and go. In total, a half dozen or so relationships, two marriages, 2 divorces, 6 bankruptcies, 2 foreclosures occurred. The estrangement of my family is now complete.

Then, just about two weeks ago, a moment of clarity. Now retired for 10 months, I often take cameras out in nature to clear my mind. Suddenly, it hits:

1. Dad's heart attacks were 50 years ago starting last March and then May.
2. I started drumming 50 years ago last September.
3. I was 12... in 6th grade... Not even an adolescent when my life changed. I had six more years in school before high school graduation.
4. My first choices of being a carpenter, electrician or brick mason, all were inspired by Pete Scimone, John Carlson and Bon Fritz respectively, were ridiculed and shot down by mom. She claimed they were all beneath me.

I'd have made far more money doing my choice of trades that what my path eventually yielded in a desk job. Thanks mom... NOT!


Two weeks ago, I began to wonder what my life would have been like had I just rejected college all together after graduation and moved away.... FAR away... to start my life. I'd not have 4 kids; 6 bankruptcies; 2 divorces; 2 foreclosures either.

My life unfolded as it did because I was weak and afraid. Too fearful to disappoint my parents and their peers. I took THEIR path, not mine.

I now wonder what I would be like had I moved to another state back in September, 1974, to become a tradesman, instead of being everyone else's beckon call.