Ungrateful

If you're the main person mourning at a funeral, you'll remember every agonising second of it. Including the people. Who came. Who didn't. How they spoke. And what their expressions were. 

I've already written in fairly exhaustive detail about the time when me and my father were basically thrown out of the only house I'd known in 25 years one night. That was a pretty crap day but there was a side-story I hadn't mentioned before that is pretty sad on its own. 

Shane was my cousin and we are more or less the same age. Shane had a difficult upbringing. His father died of a complicated viral illness when he was just a kid. He and his mom, Teresa were basically on their own after that. His father's brother, Benny, did try to help them out but since he was basically unemployed most of the time himself, it was sometimes difficult to tell who was helping who. 

I can't really say that me and Shane were the best of friends or anything. But when we did meet at family functions, we always did get along. That was mostly because there would be very few people there at our age (our other cousins were some 10+ years older). We sort of had to interact to maintain some level of sanity at those functions. 

A Helping Hand

By the time we became teenagers ready for college, things had changed somewhat. At least for my father. He was probably the most stable financially that he'd ever been at that point (he was heavily in debt for most of my life up until a couple of years earlier). 

My mother was hands down the better parent of the two but there was little question that my father, as flawed as he was, helped a fair few people in his life. And that included Shane, Aunt Teresa and Uncle Benny. 

My father funded a lot of Shane's college education. In hindsight, he probably shouldn't have since Shane didn't give a shit about his degree and wanted to give a shot (a half-hearted one at that) at acting. My father also wrote some family property in Shane's name instead of Uncle Benny, which made a lot of our relatives angry. 

I guess it made sense at the time since Uncle Benny was basically unemployed and had an alcohol problem (never expect him to be sober after 8pm). Shane seemed like a kid who had a great future ahead of him. Uncle Benny on the other hand was unmarried, even supposedly refusing to marry his deceased brother's wife years back. 

My mother had a particular fondness towards Shane, especially during her last few months. She wanted me to be more like him I guess. He was handsome & seemed bright. She thought after all that my father had done for them, they'd always have my back once she was gone. 

My father and Uncle Benny were always close, more so than his actual sibling sometimes. Uncle Benny always used to come over to our place to have lunch, almost on a daily basis. I don't think any other relatives ever tried to help him as much as my father did back then. 

Things did take an unexpected turn after a couple of years. Aunt Teresa got remarried. Uncle Benny who was living in the same house as them till then had decided to move out into a much worse place. My father never thought something like this would happen but things would unfortunately get much worse than this. 

You Never See Some Betrayals Coming

In the weeks leading up to us getting thrown out of the house, Aunt May started getting a few relatives to emotionally blackmail my father (sometimes when I was there, sometimes when I was at work). 2 of the main characters in that scheme were, surprisingly, Shane and Aunt Teresa. 

You see, once my father became bedridden, he'd lost his source of income and didn't have much (or rather any) savings. Though relatives did show up initially at the hospital, once they figured out he was never going to fully recover and didn't have much moneu, most of them just abandoned him. That was one thing, but what these two did was far worse. 

While Aunt May did lead from the front with her poisonous words about things that supposedly happened 2 decades ago, these two weren't far behind with some emotional blackmail. I assume the both of them (or at least Aunt Teresa) figured that with my father bedridden, she'd need another sugar daddy to help her and her son out. Aunt May could become that they must have thought (perhaps unaware of just how much financial trouble May was in). 

I never expected any help from these two. I'd only called Shane once for help, which was years earlier. I needed help arranging a blood donation for a friend but he seemed like he couldn't give less of a shit so I never bothered him with anything after that. But the bare minimum both of these two could do after all my father had done for them was to stay out of this issue or at the very least, not try to actively sabotage him. Aunt May was already hurting him mentally quite bad as it was. 

In a way, Aunt May had her supporters in the family. The house was in her name after all. But even they didn't actively show up at the house to stir shit up. The level of greed shown by the two of them might even have been worse than May herself, which takes some doing. 

I'd finally lost it when Shane was apparently throwing some of my things out when I was at work. I called Uncle Benny to tell the punk to cut that shit out and mind his own business. But it was a bit late by that point. The damage had already been done. 

The Aftermath

My father passed away only a few months after he was thrown out. During his funeral, I was expressionless - not because I was not paining inside but because I didn't want to show weakness to all the assholes in attendance there who made his last few months on Earth feel like hell. 

There was one person who was shedding a lot of tears and crying out though - Aunt Teresa. Were those crocodile tears? Or was she truly remorseful for the things she did a few months prior? I don't know and I don't give a shit to be frank. 

Around 6 months after my father passed, these people did try to reach out to me. I'd already made clear even before my father passed that I wanted nothing to do with them ever again. They invited me to dinner. I declined. 

Last I heard, Aunt Teresa was building a lavish new house for her son (that they can barely afford but hey, good luck) because he really wants one. Shane maintains a job at a car service while hatching various schemes that are unlikely to go anywhere. His acting career seems more like a nice dream than a real attempt at something. Shortly before I left for Delhi last year, he told me he was getting married. I wished him well even though I sure as hell hadn't forgiven either him or his mom. 

This story follows a familiar pattern in my life. When people do cruel shit to you, they like to pretend as if nothing ever happened. They want normalcy to resume as soon as possible so that their sins get ignored. Unfortunately, I'm someone who just can't forget.