Long ago, a girl once said that I wouldn\u2019t be able to survive the death of my grandparents. A comment that disturbed me then and now. She was so up in my shit that she asked me to marry her, and is now entering her sixth year of aggressively stalking me, and yet she didn’t know the first thing about me, or my family, or my life.
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Yes, my grandparents are the only family members I\u2019ve really loved, and admired, and all those happy things that make a family a family. I miss my grandmother every day, and the same will be true when my grandfather passes. But there\u2019s this dark passage that my family has been trapped in for, oh, about a hundred years. A darkness that has killed and maimed us all. It certainly infected my grandparents, who had all their fingers in the pie that my dad made and found themselves left, bewildered, in the aftermath of dad\u2019s criminal exit.<\/p>\n
When my mom killed herself, it was sort of the straw that broke their backs. My grandmother\u2019s health deteriorated starting in 2000 and, eight agonizing years later, she was gone. Those eight years were spent under the cloud of seething nerve pain. Something I understood well. In her case, though, there was no cure. Operations failed to change her life. She died in agony. And, in her soul, she carried the weight of mom and dad and everything else that had gone wrong.<\/p>\n
My grandfather suffers through the same emotional guilt, and, as he gets older, it manifests in strange and broken ways. There\u2019s no digging out of that sort of thing at 85, I think.<\/p>\n
In these cases, death becomes a release. My stalker, perhaps, doesn\u2019t understand that. Maybe she fears death, as normal people do. Which means she\u2019s never understood pain. She voiced her idiot concerns back before my operation, back when I prayed daily for death to end my neuralgia. During the 12 years I was a chronic pain sufferer, I began to see death more as a welcome change than something to fear.<\/p>\n
When my grandfather dies, so ends the long, tragic fuckery of a family saga that began when my paternal grandfather fucked over his brother in 1940 in order to steal the family business.<\/p>\n
Now there\u2019s a story. That grandfather, who died in 77, started up what would become a Washington institution (remembered and cherished forever, much to my dismay) with his brother in the 1930\u2019s.<\/p>\n
The plan was that my dad\u2019s father would come to DC and get the company off the ground while the brother wrapped up business ties in Jersey. One winter night \u2013 roundabout the date I plan to post this story \u2013 the brother was driving into town to take up reins as co-owner of what was, almost instantly, a booming business. He lost control on icy roads, crashed, and was crippled.<\/p>\n
My dad\u2019s father, then, made the decision to erase his brother. He claimed alcoholism was the problem (which, interesting enough, would eventually kill him and his wife in the 70\u2019s). As his brother lay in a hospital bed, my paternal grandfather lawyered up and removed him from the incorporation papers, shunned him, and never spoke to him again. The family Bible was blacked out, pictures were cut up, paperwork was destroyed, and, from 1940 to 2008, nobody knew that branch of the family even existed.<\/p>\n
So empires are founded. When my paternal grandfather died and my dad took over the company, he spent a quick five years embezzling every cent and vanished without a trace for 20 years. By then, my maternal grandparents, and their children, were inexorably tied into the fabric of the company, and took the brunt of prosecution and retribution. Hell, to this day, I get hate mail from former employees and jilted investors.<\/p>\n
I know, I know. Does it really end with my maternal grandfather\u2019s death? After all, I fly the flag of family history. I\u2019m the \u201cscion of an empire,\u201d and tell the story to any reporter listening. Of course, I\u2019ve turned my story, my pain, and my past into a marketing tool. I hope it inspires people to buy the books<\/a> that I published<\/a> to give away as Christmas presents<\/a> because they\u2019re actually very good titles<\/a>.<\/p>\n Or, failing that, I pretend it inspires people to get me stuff from my ridiculously long Amazon wish list<\/a>.<\/p>\n Or, if even that\u2019s impossible, maybe it\u2019ll get me laid<\/a>.<\/p>\n Amusingly, The Boble<\/a> gets me laid more than my story. Perhaps that\u2019s a lesson? Time to put the family and personal history aside and preach the Good Word of Bob Jr. In the end, what\u2019s important? Selling books, getting Dr. Who DVD\u2019s from friends and strangers, or strange pussy?<\/p>\n The answer, of course, is strange pussy.<\/p>\n