There Is A Hell, Believe Me, She's Seen It

I know I've been ranting about the whole mortgage nightmare that my mother's going through.  And I'm sure I come off as thinking she's entitled to a government hand out.  But here's the thing, that's not what I mean when I say she deserves some fucking help. 

It's not that she's asking for money.  She's not asking to have the mortgage company just forgive the entire balance due, on the second mortgage my father went ahead and put on the house under my mother's name without her consent.  She wants to pay it because she wants to stay in her home.  All she wants is to be able to write the fucking mortgage check every month without losing sleep at night.

This woman has been through it all.  I used to have a lot of faith, but not so much anymore.  I don't go to church anymore, and it's not that I don't believe in God or am bitter or anything, but if there's any example of demonstrating faith through hard times, it's my mother.  She doesn't give up.  She hasn't given up, and she won't.  There's those sayings that the meek shall inherit the earth, and that those who have suffered nothing but trials and tribulations on this earth, yet manage to stay strong in their faith, will redeem their reward in Heaven.  If that's the case Mama will have her own posse of angels waiting on her hand and foot when she gets there.

Her first marriage ended because of alcoholism.  Then my father came along and things were good for a while.  Then his alcoholism reared its head, along with his infidelity towards her with countless other women, among them her best friend.  So she was not only betrayed by her husband, but her best girl friend as well.

She's fought so many physical ailments over the years, but to look at her you'd never know.  You never hear her complain.  I have to yell at her when I catch her lugging some heavy-ass box up from the basement or I come home and she's cutting the fucking grass.  (Well, that's my job, so I'd yell at her anyway.)

She lost both of her parents before she was 50 years old.  She's got no one to lean on, because everyone leans on her.  When I bitch and moan about the fact that I still live at home, I stop myself mid-rant because right now, Ma and I need each other.  I don't think I'd leave even if I could afford to.  No matter how much shit I alone have put her through, (and trust me, it's been alot,) she will never disown me.  I jest that I will hand over my firstborn to her one day, but I'm kind of serious.

The other day I was going over some paperwork that my bank sent me concering life insurance.  It's not a bad idea to get some, no?  So I was talking to Ma about it, trying to decide how much to get, because if I got $300,000 worth, and I kick the bucket tomorrow, she can take the check to the bank and tell the mortgage brokers to fuck off.  But she looked at me and said, "If you go tomorrow they better dig a second hole right next to you to put me in."

I cried a little.




Mama with her grandson, Nicholas, August 2010

 

So That My Kids Have A Place To Call MomMom's

Ma just ran next door to fax her 2009 tax return over to the mortgage company.  This is one of the million other things she's had to do since filing for a loan remodification.  For the second time.

Last October she applied for help through one of Obama's programs designed to help people refinance their mortgages so they can afford to stay in their homes.  Thousands of people got screwed over by shitty mortgage companies by unknowingly signing over their lives to loans that inevitably end in inammitorization.  (The interest keeps going up, the principle keeps going down, and you end up owing more over time than the house is even worth.)  I'm not going to get into the long, drawn out story of how my mother got involved in one of these scams, let's just say my father makes lousy business decisions and Ma is now suffering because she was married to him for 25 years.  I will also not go into detail about how much shit she has had to do when it comes to applying for any kind of help to get this fucked up mortgage back in check.  Discovering the meaning of life or climbing Mount Everest would be easier.  Trust me.

The first time she applied for refinancing, she was rejected.  Here is why:

MY MOTHER HAS PERFECT CREDIT.  ALL OF HER BILLS, INCLUDING THE ASTRONOMICAL MORTGAGE PAYMENT, ARE CURRENT.  WE HAVE LEARNED THAT ONE MUST DEFAULT AND EITHER ENTER A SHORT-SALE OF THEIR HOME OR HAVE THE BANK FORECLOSE ON IT BEFORE THEY WILL EVEN BE CONSIDERED FOR A LOAN MODIFICATION. 

The government will not help those who obey the laws, those who pay their bills on time, or those who have worked hard their entire lives to create and keep a home for their family.  Because, you know, my mother isn't some crackhead that keeps popping out babies, she's not unemployed, she's not looking for hand outs.  But because her and my father are now divorced and she wants to sever any financial ties completely with him, she can't afford the mortgage payments on her own.  I do what I can to help, giving her money for the electric or water bills, or writing her a check if something breaks, (read:  if I break something.)  Half of the mortgage payment would be an entire paycheck for me, and I don't ask for help with any of my own bills.

So, in other words, you have to be a real fuck-up before someone will help you. My mother would like to avoid fucking up her credit and losing her house. But the government won't help you until you have become totally destitute, and even then, your chances of any kind of break? Are slim to none.

We might be able to make it if I just give in and start robbing banks or selling drugs and/or my body.  Because honestly?  It's getting to the point where I would seriously consider doing any of those things just to give my mama some relief.  And maybe if I do end up a junkie whore with ten kids, one of us could get some fucking help.

I'm Back!

I'm going to get back into updating this thing. Stupid Tumblr has to be awesome and take up most of the time I spend on the damn computer. Oh yeah, and then there's life, too.

Currently,

-Ma and I are still in the house. It's still rocky and a little uncertain, but we're still here, and I believe in my heart she's not going anywhere. I will fuck someone's day up if they try to make her. Seriously. I will fuck their day UP.

-I've severed my ties with my father, for the most part. I see him at family functions, but I've moved on from trying to sustain a relationship. I was given the responsibility of closing down the shop over the summer when he started his new job. The last straw was having a contractor try to rip me a new asshole because of my father's actions. Nothing like telling a guy you don't even know that what your father does is no longer any of your business, you don't give a shit, and to please fuck off with tears rolling down your face. After that episode I calmly but firmly told my father that I was walking away from the business, that I don't care what he does in his spare time, I don't care anymore if he's drinking, and I did not appreciate getting bitched at as a result of his actions. That was that and I feel like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders.

-As for the other toxic man in my life, the infamous Buzzard, all ties have been severed with him as well and Holy fuck it's like I can breathe again! We haven't spoken since the 4th of July. To this day I don't know why, but I do know that I am SO much better off.
But I do love the fact that I'm still fucking one of his friends, unbeknownst to Buzzard of course, and his cousin and I are talking again.

-Work is going really well and I am kicking serious ass.

-I have found a wonderful friend in Andy, my road dog, my sidekick, my partner-in-crime. And Tyler. The three of us are the ultimate, most entertaining Shit Show of Wilmington.

-My nephew is growing up SO fast! He just turned a year old and he's walking and talking and seriously? The most beautiful baby. Ever. No doubt about it.

-Yeah, I still sleep around like it's my job, (sometimes I wish it were because I'd be making serious loot and maybe actually pay off my student loans before I die,) but it's all in good fun.

So hopefully I can manage to keep this blog fresh, as I've been tweaking my writing style, and for anyone who actually does take the time to read it, thanks. I hope you continue to enjoy.

Love,
Dane

Heavy Things, Part 4

Terrifying predictions made almost a year ago are slowly becoming more and more concrete. I've been living in the same house, the house I will refer to as 313, since I was eight years old, and it will be going on the market soon. My mother has put her heart and soul into making this house a home. Over the years, every single room has been remodeled, reflecting her tastes, with the exception of the bedroom I spend most of my time in, which I did myself.

The swimming pool that she swam in as a teenager was moved from my grandparents' backyard over here to 313 back in 1992. It was a tiny, 12x24 above ground pool with my grandfather's handwriting on sections of the aluminum sides. On any given day over the summers, there'd be loads of people packed in like sardines on our tiny deck, sitting in beach chairs, MomMom sitting in her corner where we rigged a picnic umbrella attached to the railing with bungee cords so she could be comfortable watching her family frolic and play from her perch as the matriarch. PopPop would drag a chair to the other side of the yard and sit under a big tree that used to be there, and that was his perch as the patriarch of the family from which he watched us all act like crazy people, puffing away on his cigar and laughing at us.

In 2005, the above ground pool came down, and Ma made the decision to use the money she inherited when MomMom passed away to have a gorgeous 20x40 inground pool put in. More decking was built, a fence installed circling the pool, a retaining wall built with rocks my brother would find on the side of the road, and flowerbeds that Ma tends to every summer sit atop it. There's a recessed space in the concrete that surrounds the pool where a piece of the aluminum with PopPop's handwriting is nestled under plexiglass. When the pool was officially opened for the first time, we dedicated it to MomMom and PopPop, and my mother, father, brother, and I held hands and all four of us jumped in at the same time. Our backyard is referred to as Club Evans - Everyone welcome. It's a place where our family and friends gather; where we all eat, drink, and are merry. It's an escape from reality.

There was a beautiful sunroom added on to the back of the house as well, built by my brother and a few guys that worked for my father in 2004. During the Christmas season, an eleven foot tree with white twinkling lights and adorned with all of MomMom's Santa Claus ornaments sits right in front of the wall of windows. It was in this room that my brother proposed to his wife.

313 has been a host to birthday parties, Christmas parties, graduations, showers, anniversaries, surprise parties, even a funeral reception, over all of these years. Ma never had any qualms about opening her home to guests. But for all the good memories that reside here, there are just as many bad ones. It was in the living room where I came downstairs to find a state trooper waiting to arrest my father for a DUI in 2000. It was in the kitchen, the family room, and my parents' bedroom where bombs were dropped, mostly my father's doing. Sometimes I think more tears have been shed in this house than good times had.

Some people have actually had the nerve to say to my mother that she's spoiled and materialistic. These people have never lived in this home. They aren't the ones who lie in their bed alone at night sick with worry about what tomorrow will bring. All these people are just outsiders looking in. They don't know that reason behind the new cars, the material things, was my father's guilt. Ma traded in the Navigator after the divorce because she could not afford the car payment and my father had hit rock bottom. What these people do not know is that the LEAST my father could do for all the strife he has caused is keep Ma in the house that she built into a home with her own blood, sweat, and tears. I speak both literally and figuratively. But he refuses to acknowledge that he only has one place to go but up. He chooses to reside in the hell he built around himself.

So it's just me and Ma in this house. And we cannot afford the mortgage anymore. We don't know what's going to happen, all we know is that we have to abandon everything that is familiar to us. We don't know where we are going to live. We don't know what we have to get rid of. We don't even know if the house will sell. We have to accept that it is time to start over.