Well this is different

I hope you don’t feel any obligation at this point to even respond - much less act on - after getting this new information.

Best to just stand still and let the storm pass.

I say this from experience. Alcoholic parents, brother, ex- husband, with all the BS that comes from that. Nephew and grandson and all their antics.

Punky, you constantly amaze me with your perpetual state of oblivion.

WTF would I be responding to? I haven’t talked to the man in decades. Read my 2nd to last paragraph. Then read it again.

He totally fucked up his life, ensured his adult children will have no inheritance, and wasted millions of dollars on god knows what. Yet i’m The one who he was convinced needed him.

One of the few times I choose to actually share something about my personal life, and I get you. Christ on a cracker.

I read your post earlier, but didn't know what to say about it. Seems like you have the situation under control.

Yes I do Edgar.

Bitches generally know how to handle life. Punky called me one as if that were a bad thing.
Yeah, I’m a bitch. What’s your superpower?

I escaped from the sadist and narcissist that raised me years ago. All the other people they brought into this world are either dead, dying or not at all dealing with the mental illness that has wrecked havoc on their lives.

It’s awful they managed to instill so much fear into 5 people that all but one has been essentially paralyzed by it. If I wasn’t a bitch, meaning independent, fearless and unwilling to play nice because it’s what’s expected, I’d be dead too.

Some lineages are so toxic the best thing is for them to simply end. The fact 2 of the 5 managed to not breed and perpetuate the wickedness is a step in the right direction.

Your definition of bitch (strong, independent, fearless) is not what I meant.

Your response to me was unessarily cruel and without merit.

No - you didn’t escape being raised by crude, toxic people.

You are just the same.

Does he have any regrets?

I understand you are estranged, but I'm sorry to hear about your brother.

I have no idea, but I would say knowing how he was enmeshed in all this he doesn’t have, nor ever had the capacity to even even conceive of regret.

I’ve learned the little I know from a niece (his younger daughter) who is probably between 25 and 27. I’d only seen her once when she was very small. She had reached out to me a little while back, and we finally connected 2 days ago via FB Messanger.

I learned that he lives in a world where he blames everyone and everything else for anything wrong in his life. She said he never came to terms with his abused upbringing, nor has he tried. Instead, he and his late night is wife heaped emotional abuse on them. However when they came of age they both left, as times had changed and things were more enlightened. He blames them for “abandoning the family”. Much as my younger sister and I were accused when we left the circle of their power. Unfortunately my sister still, even after years of therapy, still struggles.

Not no Izzy, I don’t believe he knows the concept of regret, only blame.

I was sorry to hear of it too engineer. It’s absolutely tragic.

So many lives ruined and damaged.

I think you might be reading too much into this post Chai. I (seemingly) understand Punkey's well meaning intentions. She was just reminding you to not weaponized this newly gained information against your brother against your brother and to take the high ground. Let sleeping dogs lie in their own filth.



I think Punkey was worried (by the tone of the OP) that you were preparing to wield this newly gained terrible news to taunt your already shattered and broken brother. I'm sure he's already in the Hell of his own making. If he comes (unsolicited) attacking you for whatever hypocritical reason he might have, you have the right to defend yourself and use this against him. Other than that? Leave it be.

Your OP sounds like you're getting ready to Pearl Harbor your drug addicted brother in a very belated response to his prior attack on you on the last conversation you had with him at your other brother's funeral.

I understand and share you and your family's pain caused by your reckless brother. Don't add to the pain and wreckage by tsunami-ing him and the family with I told ya so retorts.

I'm sorry you're going through all this ******* ****. Maybe some good can come out of it if you and your niece become friends.

Your interpretation is incorrect tsar.

Like you, I seldom, if ever talk about my personal life here. This just floored me so much I felt the need to share/unburden.
I have zero desire to retort, contact or in any way involve myself with any person in my immediate family. There’s been no contact in decades and this certainly doesn’t spark any interest in doing so. I learned through much hard work on my part that it is not only useless, but stupid.

I can say on relooking at my initial post it might seem as if I was personally involved with the connection of him destroying is life, and his comment to me. I meant it wondering how, even at that time years ago, someone could threaten “you need me/us” when it was so out there what a mess they were in.

The brother who died needed them, I’m sure they told him that many times. Unfortunately, those here can’t know how little help was offered or provided to him. Knowing my family as others here can’t, they used his alcoholism and other dangerous behavior as a story line for their own benefit. His misery was of little or no concern to them. He was used as a stage prop they could point to and say to the world, “look how much we suffer because of him”. At his funeral they wallowed in the attention they got. Sickening. It was a circus.

Interestingly enough, during my brief visit there, I was actually reprimanded for actually metioning his case of death. A man who who used to be a neighbor when we were children called to express his condolences, and I answered the phone. I had always liked Dick as a child. He had an alcoholic wife, and he went through the mill with her before she died. So when Dick asked me how A. had died, but not only because of his wife, I obviously said alcoholism, because guess what, he died of alcoholism. He must have called back later and spoken to my mother (the narcissist). She came to me enraged because I had said what he died of. By that time in life, I knew her MO’s so didn’t engage. Just said I wasn’t going to lie. As you can surmise, life was/is all about lies, as evidenced by crack brother blaming everyone and everything else for his life.

I’m detached from this. An observer. Not even an observer really, since there’s been nothing to observe from my view for decades.

It’s a shame that a fortune and a business that took decades to build up, that could have ensured the livelihoods of not only his children, but generations to come, without at this point even direct involvement in the day to day running, was lost in such a short time and in such an idiotic way.

Yeah tsar, retort was not even on my radar. I doubt he would even recognize me or understand where he is in life.

Not surprised. Not the first time and won't be the last.


I'm sorry I doubted you. You have a right to catharsis by dropping this situation here. I questioned your emotional maturity. I apologize for that failure on my account.

Thanks Izzy but I’m not the one going through anything. He is. And his progeny are the ones that lose by it.

Actually, my niece contacted me not to inform me of my brother at all. It was in passing when we were messaging back and forth that I (really without much interest, just being polite) asked after her parents. She’s had years to reconcile to her parents fucked upness but is also still working on dealing with being told by him that she and her sister abandoned the family. Heh. Funny, I just realized he went from “you need us” to “you’re abandoning me”

Need and abandonment. Two sides of the same coin.

Wow, what a sick dynamic, huh? Leaves no room for having anything of your own choosing, because both rely on others whims to provide or deny.

You're still having to deal with it, and stuff like this brings back bad memories. My paternal grandmother was a horrible old woman who constantly found fault with all her children/grandchildren. I have a cousin of the same age. Whenever I was over there all she would do was talk about him and how wonderful he was, ignoring or belittling anything I'd done.

When he was there he got told how wonderful I was and nothing he ever did was worth mentioning. When we were both there she'd talk about someone else.

She was teetotal, Christmases were alcohol free but misery abundant.

However, in the last few years of her life the doctor recommended she had a glass of brandy before bed. She used to take it with a ridiculous amount of saccharin pills, and would pull a face about how horrible it was. I guess it never dawned on her to try diluting it. Anyway within three months of the doctor advising her to have a glass of brandy she was consuming a bottle every two days. I suppose it's just as well he never suggested crack.

Thank you tsar, that actually brought a tear to my eye.

I have very special people in my life I can share with, but I really felt the need to type to out.

If for any other reason, it’s a damn good story.
Obviously a lot has been left out. It’s a catch 22 really. If I tell more I’m rambling and making it about kind self. If I don’t give details, I’m asking for advice or sympathy.

I don’t know the point it falls off the balance.

I guess I came to this knowing whatever I wrote, there will be someone who has a much more dramatic life, much bigger stories, and I didn’t want to come across as me, me, me.
Honesty though, I was Really hoping I wouldn’t gather the other group that reads a snippet, thinks they know the whole story, and offers pablum as advise. Yes I mean punky, who in my experience offers and hides behind “well meaning” advise.

Yes, I am toxic toward “well meaning” anything, as the basis of anything “meant well” is that it’s a built in excuse for doing or saying nothing helpful.

Crude? Yeah, sometimes. So ******* what?

I’m not here to make my life intent all about not hurting useless sensibilities like “I was only trying to help”

Punky knows I can’t stand her milk toast advise, and have called it on her many times. Why would she offer more of the same to someone who has clearly made it known multiple times in the past that it’s not welcome?

Clearly so she can get butt hurt when she knew that would happen, and garner thumbs up from other agreeing what a meanie I am for calling her on her pap.
I ain’t got time for that **** from anyone.

Well you’re quite right there Izzy.

Fortunately for the vast majority of things “bad memories” are exactly that. Just pictures in my mind that don’t evoke much of anything as it’s pretty well purged. One of the few memories of that time that still bothers me involves an animal. So I really can’t get into it. For awhile I tried to tell myself there was nothing I could do, as I was just a child. But I know that’s bullshit, I could have done a lot more. It was over a number of years, and I could have done more. I was just afraid of the punishment I would’ve received. I would have laughed at any punishment today as it would have been worth it. I was just too afraid then.

This funny. My grandmother lived next door to us. To my knowledge she wasn’t a drinker.
Similar scenario at one point of having “doctors order” to take a glass of brandy. I remember seeing her one Xmas overindulging with a 2nd or 3rd glass, and she was actually kind of cute. Her singing some Polish harvest song or something that she then repeated a rendition of in English. Something about parsnips, rutabagas, cabbage and beets. She was off the hook man.

Then she too started requesting a bottle of the god awful tasting stuff and my father cut her off.

Ridiculous because he was a raging alcoholic, and she didn’t drive and by that time basically sat on the couch and watched “her stories”. Even if god forbid she did fall, we were right there.

I've known a number of elderly ladies who loved to drink. When I was at the apartments they came and went. One funny woman would start drinking every day at about two. By four she would fall on the floor and my supervisor would have to help her up, with her laughing loud enough to be heard out in the yard. Her daughter eventually moved her to where she could be policed out of her destructive ways. One day I was in front of a grocery store, when a woman approached to ask if I would go in the store for her and get a bottle of wine. I took her money without hesitation and bought it for her. While I don't think they need to drink, they were doing it before I met them and it was not for me to treat them like children.