Member-only story
Abundant Life
Around about the time my brother became a millionaire, a status which he achieved in part to an inheritance, he started resenting the fact my mother has a significant income from the government. Last time he was here, he sat her down and said,
“You don’t realize how lucky you are. The ONLY reason you have money coming in is because dad died.”
I was appalled. I told him to stop it, that she doesn’t need to be shamed like that. She doesn’t deserve it. He looked at me and said,
“Well, it’s true. If dad hadn’t died, she wouldn’t have an income.”
My father died from complications of an on-the-job injury in 1984. My mother was awarded a monthly income from the Department of Labor and Industries. Cost of living increases over nearly 40 years’ time have resulted in her receiving a monthly influx equivalent to a healthy upper middle-class income. This, plus her social security, based on my dad’s wages, plus a small pension she receives from having been a part-time teacher’s aide for the deaf, ensures her financial comfort.
My mother raised us with very little input from my father. He was physically present, but emotionally absent. He was abusive psychologically, physically, and sexually. He was a rather horrible man.
In her early 60s my mother quit her job as a teacher’s aide to care for her father…
