In the end, you just end up staying at work really late to make sure that they can have it tomorrow. It's not so much the staying late that's bad (because trust me, I'll get that time back this week). What's bad is having my reputation for not breaking things in jeopardy for their silly political games.

But I digress. Since I was at work so late I wasn't home to take a call from my grandfather. Marilynn took a message, and said he wanted to talk to me about something; she added that he sounded odd, and was very cold on the phone, which was strange. I wondered what it was about, but in truth, I had a good idea what it was about. My mother has been in undergoing care for an inoperable brain tumor since June, so I knew it had to be something about that. Since insurance hasn't paying for quite a bit of it as of late, I figured he wanted me to share in the costs of her care until they get her home at the end of the month, but also, I suspected it was just anger at us not going to the hospital more than once a week because of conflicting schedules and work demands.

While I'm not enthused with having yet another avenue to pour our money into, sure, we will do what we can. Since we've gotten married I'm trying to get us in a mode of paying off our debts so we can begin to save money towards future endeavors, so misdirections like this aren't welcomed. Still, she's my mother, so what're we gonna do besides help out?

So, this evening I call him back on the cordless while Marilynn listens in on the corded phone. It's easier to do this than trying to relay the whole conversation after-the-fact with the questions of what was said and then repeating it all out of both context and order. Once connected, my grandfather tells me that he needed financial assistance, and I say sure, we can do a part. He says he'll get details Thursday morning about what the insurance company will go ahead and reimburse, and he'll have an idea of what the total impact will be.

All the while, he is acting strangely. There's this sound in his voice I can't place, as if he's walking on eggshells, which is something he never does. It's not just odd, it's damned odd.

Then, the other shoe dropped.

My mother has a relatively large amount of cash in her checking account. Nobody is a signatory on her account except her and the balance is slowly building up due to SSI and medical retirement pension deposits. In the meantime, my grandparents have been paying her few personal bills and now, her rehabilitation home care. My grandfather has quite a bit of money (although he doesn't like to make it seem that way) so I didn't think a lot of them paying the bills, because for the most part Marilynn and I live close to paycheck to paycheck, paying our bills and paying off older debts. In addition, our recent trips to evacuate from Hurricane Rita and get married took a fair bit of money that we had saved up, plus a loan from the credit union at work. There's just a limit to what we can do because of work and prior obligations.

Well, of course, my grandfather wants to get at that pile of money (or since I talked to him, I realize, any pile of money will do, no matter how small), and he can't because he isn't a signatory on her checking account and my grandparents couldn't acquire a durable power of attorney. In fact, we spent a good while trying to get my mother's PIN out of her so he could at least get some cash to cover her personal bills, and she wouldn't spill it. I happened to remember it, though, and passed it along so he could cover my mother's expenses with her own money.

That'd be all well and good if he could find her ATM card. It's disappeared, or rather, it's missing. Saying it disappeared implies that someone actually ever saw it. Apparently, my mother had either misplaced it before she went to the hospital, but I suspect that she hid it and won't tell anyone where it's at. It's not an unreasonable conclusion, because before Marilynn took her to the emergency room in June my mother had been somewhat hostile and distant, and I even believe a little dementia had set in from the pressure the tumor was putting on her brain. To her, it probably seemed reasonable to protect what was hers by doing so. It's quite common in patients with dementia from Alzheimer's, for instance.

However, since Marilynn was the last person with my mother before she was put in the hospital, my grandfather is trying to imply that Marilynn took my mother's ATM card. How does going from being a concerned (practically, at the time) daughter-in-law and taking her to the hospital for emergency care turn into her being a thief? I can't wrap my mind around it.

While I was talking to my grandfather I was going into a seriously multithreaded mode, attending to way too many things all at once:

• Part of me is trying to even make sense of what my grandfather's saying because he's wandering all over the map in his conversation, and if this is because he's trying to be beat around the bush, if he's drunk or what.
• Part of me is trying to decide if he's seriously accusing Marilynn, my wife, of stealing, and if he really thought I'd take him seriously about that. I have to admit that I was giving him the total benefit of the doubt at the time, because it's unfathomable to me that my grandfather would imply such a thing, but in the clarity of hindsight I realize that there's only one way to take what he said.
• Part of me sees Marilynn getting upset listening in on the other extension, and me getting concerned for what she's thinking and feeling.
• Part of me is hurt because my grandparents would think such a thing about Marilynn, but then he accuses me of being involved in this presumed theft by telling me that he hasn't gotten a bank statement for my mother's checking account in a couple months, so he wanted to ask if I had changed her mailing address on her bank account to my house (even though I have no access to her account) and was getting her bank statements. Huh?

Since then I've had time to digest the comments and events, and I have concluded that it makes sense in my conspiratorial mind that they would be cold and distant to the two of us. All this time we had thought it was because my grandparents were mad that we hadn't quit our jobs to spend every waking moment at the bedside at the hospital while our landlords evict us from our home and creditors haul away our worldly possessions. Who knew it was because they thought we were stealing!

I don't know what to make of this. Part of me wants to go off on them, and the part of me who knows the conspiracist is in my mind implores me to get more information from someone besides my grandfather before I go nuclear. Occam's Razor still holds; the simplest explanation is generally the better one to run with.

But still. Where do they get off?

I know these people. I know how they think, and yes, I think they believe that we're monsters of that sort. I may have had my differences with them in the past and we may hold our grudges, but I would never, ever steal from my family, much less anyone else, and would never consort with nor marry a woman who would do such a thing either.

Where do we go from here? Why should I believe that my family will be straight with me on this matter? Who can we turn to for advice when now I don't know how to feel about anyone in my family? My uncle's family has been a little strange towards us at times lately, too, so do they know about this, and if so, do they think it's true? If things go the way that we believe they might, what should I do about the finances? Should we just walk away? I don't know what to do, because there is no simple answer to any of this.

At least I still have my little monkey girl. That's the important thing.

restlessmind