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Love
October 2009 
The Bragger
Posted on Feb 6th, 2009
by 
Fearless
Fearless
My father has always been a braggart. I suppose in response to having had such a poverty stricken childhood that he and his mother had to share a pair of shoes between them.
So perhaps it shouldn't come as any surprise that the amount of money he has managed to accumulate, has become the most important thing in his life. His greatest achievement. One that I know he rates the highest of all. To have come from such humble beginnings where he left school (with minimal schooling) at the age of 13 and has achieved what he has.
"I'm worth more than the whole lot of you put together!" is one comment I can remember him making at a family function many years ago. "And I'm better than the rest of you too!" Poor man. To think that the acquisition of wealth makes you better than someone else.
Still, it must come as an incredible achievement to know that through hard work, a bit of entrepreunership, some canny investments and good luck, he is now a "multi-millionaire" (as he is fond of telling people).
Last night I had a telephone call which ended up quite rattling me. In the six months since my mother died last August, dad and my brother had several months where they struggled along alone, trying to look after themselves - something that dad is so resistant to. By that I mean, he sees it as a woman's work to look after the man. So the thought of him cooking for himself or washing his own clothes etc., was absolutely the worst thing imaginable!
Just before Christmas he found a suitable housekeeper and she moved into the house with the two of them, saying that the cabin on the property (where I used to stay when I was in town), was "too far away from the main house for her to feel safe". (It's probably about 50 feet away).
The family home is large enough to accommodate several people without feeling cramped and she initially took up residence in what used to be 'the billiard room' where she was able to have her own lounge room and bedroom.
At some stage though, she decided that the loungeroom, situated beside my father's bedroom, was a nicer room so she made that her bedroom. And my sister tells me that if the main bathroom in the house is being used by my brother, the housekeeper uses my father's ensuite bathroom (which means she has to walk through my father's bedroom to get to it).
This seems a rather strange arrangement to me. To move into a house with two men, and then with four bedrooms in the house to choose from, you change a lounge room into a bedroom right beside one of the men's bedrooms?
Okay ... perhaps you could give her the benefit of the doubt and think, "Okay, the view from that room IS nice." Still, I would think that I would prefer to have my privacy.
Then comes the news that the new housekeeper is SO pleased with her new employment situation, that she told my father, "I love it here! I will stay here until I die. You don't need to pay me. I will stay here rent free in exchange for cooking and cleaning for you."
Uh huh.
So now you have a 44 year old woman living in a house with two men - a recently bereaved 78 year old and his 50 year old son. You're not getting paid and you have taken up residence in the room next to the old man. Mmmmmmm ....
THEN my father tells me the story of woe from her previous employers, how badly they treated her and how he could have cried when she related how hard she had to work there. "And the poor woman didn't even have health insurance," he told me last night, "so I took her down to the HBA (a medical benefits insurance company) to sign her up and they said it would give her immediate cover if I put her on my plan."
This took me aback. "You've put your housekeeper on YOUR private health insurance plan, dad?" "Yes," he told me. "They told me that if I put her on as my partner, she would get immediate cover."
"Do you think that's wise, dad? Putting your housekeeper down on your medical insurance as your PARTNER?"
He exploded in anger. "I don't know why everybody says that! It doesn't mean anything! It's just a way of her being able to claim straight away!"
When I tried to explain that it seemed to me that there was a very good case building for her to claim herself as his common law wife, he said, "Well, I've told her that I'm putting her in my will anyway!" "She's not getting paid and so when I go, I want her to be paid $300 a week for the rest of her life."
You have got to be kidding me! (This is what I'm thinking). You are making the woman who cooks and cleans for you a beneficiary of your will after knowing her for two months?! Wouldn't it just be simpler to pay her for god's sake!
But then, if he paid her, she wouldn't be dependent on him. And if she isn't dependent on him, she might go.
I wish it wasn't the case that I've reacted to this news. After all, it's his money. He can do whatever he likes with it. While I'm still stunned by this revelation, I think I am slowly reconciling myself to the fact that my relationship with my father is becoming more and more distant ... more withdrawn. I can't think of any other way of protecting myself from his vindictive cruelty. Because I do think it's vindictiveness that he's operating on at the moment. Vindictiveness and self-preservation.
He is absolutely TERRIFIED of having to look after himself. That four months after my mother died that he and my brother had to fend for himself were the loneliest and most frightening of his life, I think. And he will do ANYTHING to make sure he isn't alone again.
He will tell this woman anything and promise her anything to ensure she doesn't leave and make him face that loneliness again.
Part of all this I'm sure, is punishing me because I did not give up my life to cook and clean and look after the two of them. There isn't enough money in the world that could have enticed me to do that!
In the end, I accept that fate didn't give me a loving father who puts "the fruit of his loins" above all else. It now seems that fate is also taking away a big pocketful of money which could have been a pay off for that lack.
A payback? Is that how I think? To exchange a loving father for a million dollars?
I'm sitting here thinking, "Hah! Is that what it comes down to?"
Actually, it's quite funny really because I don't have either! lol It really is quite funny.
I wonder if the poor man will ever have an epiphany?
Our relationship has always been a difficult one. One that I have struggled my whole life to come to terms with. To feel, in the core of your heart, that the man who gave you life doesn't love you and in fact, at times, seems to even be contemptuous of you is a hard fact of life to come to terms with.
Even sadder is the fact that I don't even care if he lives or dies. He has hurt and abused me so much ... affecting who I am. I wonder who I would have become if I hadn't had to deal with the emotional blows he has struck to my heart and to my mind. In fact, my preference is that he dies because at least then I can rule a line under his presence in my life ... at least, I hope I can. Perhaps he will always haunt me.
(Photo above: Just for a bit of fun, I thought I would include this photo of Zsa Zsa Gabor, who once famously said, "I'm a very good housekeeper. Whenever I divorce a husband, I always keep the house!")
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