Condolences.

I am very sad for you. Will be thinking of you and praying for you and your family

Linda

Thanks, everybody. I appreciate your messages.

I'm getting ready to take Spenser to the kitty sitter and hit the road for Evansville.

Thanks.

Thanks again.

Today I went to the funeral and saw the brother I've always known dead.\

Almost nobody gets it that I'm kind of cool NOT because of what he did to me financially but that it goes way back from that. I was always willing to like him, and he never liked me.

Today his son, a young 27, wept but talked of the dad he loved, even beyond the bad times.

Today, Jason kind of reached out to me. He looks a lot like Bob, and he seems to have Bob's talents emerging but without the ruthlessnes. Jason reached out to me today and asked if he could call me to talk. It's kind as if Bob's kid might fill a gap that Bob and I could not.

I was very impressed with Jason. He did seem to be trying to open doors and bridge gaps. He seemed to want me to know stuff he'd heard from my brother that meant Bob cared about me. Bob did somewhat, but Jason seemed to want to emphasize it. When he asked me for my phone numbers and put them in his cell and asked if he could call me just to talk, I was elated. I assured him that I would love that. I don't know if he will follow through, but yes, he opened a lane, and I'm all for it. I think I might be able to help him, too. Bob was on one hand handsome and charming and able to win over anyone he wanted to win over. Then, when it came to family, some of us, and to an extent his own kids and definitely his wife, he could be very surly and abrasive. even verbally abusive to a HIGH degree.

His daughter is a bit too high minded as he was. She's not abrasive, but she's young, pretty, and on his sixties and seventies high bound to looks.

Jason is more down to earth. Even Bob often told me that Jason is just like his mom's dad, hard working, frugal, honest. Maybe Jason, on his maturity, and on his bad times with Bob, understands quite a bit.

I HOPE he calls. I don't know why I didn't ask for his number. But I would rather he called.

It could be helpful for both of us, I think.

Thanks. I don't know if Jason will call. I hope he will.

My brother was a complex person. From the time we were little kids, he had a mean streak. My brother and brother in law say he never got over sibling jealousy because I was younger, but I don't know. He never liked me much. But although he was very worldly and intent on being rich, and he had talent to become rich, he also had a sense of spirituality I never had. As a kid, he loved playing church. At the community swimming pool, he liked to play baptism. I was the one baptized. He had the standard words down to a tee, but then he would hold me under water until I struggled. The day before he died, he preached a sermon in a little church. He was serving as lay pastor as my dad did in the same church in the late sixties and early seventies. I think he meant what he preached, but on the other hand, he was NOTHING like my dad. He was a banker by trade, and though I don't KNOW, not necessarily an honest banker but just an aggressive and smooth one. In '05 when I moved to Georgia, he moved to Louisiana (right before Katrina) and took over a failing bank. He turned it around from losing money to making a lot of money, but when he went to lunch and got drunk, the bank wouldn't tolerate even a money maker.

He went back home to Indiana, had nothing to go on, and died.

I am sure nobody cares and I am just venting, but the guy kind of haunts me. He could be very spiritual, but he could be nuts and nastily aggressive, too. My older brother and sister just mourn him, but they didn't grow up with him. I did. I know all his nasty secrets. They don't.

Okay...blow aside.

I DO very much appreciate all the kind posts here. I truly do, more than you know.

Bob was a jerk, and he caused me no end to trouble, but I did love him.

Jason hasn't called. I don't know if he will. I can't find his phone number. Apparently, he used my brother's cell when he called me last week. He recently bought a house, and he's not listed in White Pages online.

The baptism was one of thousands of ways Bob worked at making me nuts. I could swim...taught myself when I was five...but being held under is another thing! Sibling rivalry, I guess, but he certainly was a pain to live with my whole life. He picked on me for fourteen years, and then when he went to college, he got all over me for not being sad to see him go.

Once, a good twenty years ago, the family was at his house when he was still really prosperous. We had a family Trivial Pursuit game, and they could get heated. Men against women. The arguing was going on, but it hadn't crossed the line to ugly. I made some kind of comment, and Bob went off. He hollered "You shut the F@@K up," and that was it. I got my coat and left. It hit me that I was no longer trapped in the house with him and I didn't have to put up with him at all. I think I avoided him for well over a year, maybe two years.

He pulled me back in. He'd been going to AA, and he gave me the "bury the hatchet" speech with the "make amends" thing. He took me to lunch at the country club...and had a couple of drinks.

I think something in him knew he didn't ever treat me right, but something a little stronger couldn't let him stop. He didn't like me.

And I seriously never did anything bad to him. I was eternally hopeful he could get over whatever it was. Considering he bankrupted and humiliated me, cost me $15,000 in savings I had to hand over to the court, I think still talking to him was pretty generous of me, but he never really got it.

Tonight some goofy former student sent me a paper she wrote and wanted me to make it literate. I like fixing bad language, so I probably overfixed. But it needs to be right.

She said it was personal, not for a class. Whatever.

I had to save it to send it back, so I had to go to my files.

I found a "Good Bob" file there, a nice email from him I saved.

He said he loved our conversation. I don't remember it.

But I saved the email.

Today, I went to my credit union to get a loan. I told the guy my whole sordid history because of Bob. He ran my credit score, not too bad. He told me my bankruptcy does NOT show. He said shut up. Bob MUST have done something.

A bankruptcy is not on my credit score.

Some foreclosures are, but not bankruptcy.

The bank will lend me fix my bathroom money in any number of ways.

I need, really, to talk to Bob.