Moving slowly & in pieces

 At least that is what it feels like. I keep bringing over bits and pieces of things and unpacking them. I guess I don’t want to have the experience again where I am finding things I thought I lost in storage containers not unpacked in an attic.

We are building some ikea furniture and slowly decorating so we only have to plop over the big stuff & the cats at the end of the month. With me owning my place we have that luxury to take our time and not rush. So I’ve just been sipping on whisky in my new office listening to records. 

I moved my dad’s ashes to the new house last night. I cried about it like 5 times in a row. It was super emotional for some reason. I finally got his ashes from my sister in 2018 after 2 years of fighting with her for them. She pawned the gold finger print necklace that the funeral home also had waiting for me. As she says, “she picked up his ashes so she deserved the money.” (Nevermind that she lived 5 minutes away from the funeral home and I lived an hour away - but whatever.)

I’ve resigned myself to accepting that everything of my life with my father that my sister offered to hold on to for us had been pawned or sold on Facebook marketplace to support her hidden gambling and, possibly, drug habit. She sold almost all of his guitars, ruined his expansive record collection, sold all the game consoles and games he and I bought and collected together (despite convincing me she had step kids that could play them - they never touched them she sold them within a week of dad dying. Thousands of dollars worth of games and consoles - for what I hear was a ride to a casino.) 

She sold family heirlooms from my grandmothers house (that she conned my grandmother into giving her as inheritance) and pulled out the copper piping and left the house abandoned. Broken windows, flooded basement, rotted wood.

It just hurts still that so many memories of my dad and my grandmother my sister destroyed by being so fake and manipulative. My whole life she was this way - always lying and stealing. I was always trying to get everyone to like me but I couldn’t compete. Besides my dad - every adult only cared about my sister. I was constantly compared, never good enough, told by my own mother I was ugly and stupid in comparison. And as much as I tried to mend the relationships - get the validation I wanted - I never could.

I loved my sister. I still love her, a part of me does. But I’ll never forgive her. I’ll never forgive myself for trusting that she had her life together, that she had grown up. She was just hiding behind a mask - she was always the same person. If I hadn’t listened to my friend and took a handful of my dad’s records and a couple guitars after he died - I would have nothing of my dad. Nothing at all. All I have now I had to sneak away with as the moment my dad passed away my sister was looking on eBay for the prices of his instruments.

My dad told me the year before he died. He had a dream that he was dead and my sister came in his apartment like a vulture looking for things she could sell. He said he was going to put me as the manager of his estate - but he never got around to it. I told him I wouldn’t be able to function if he died. 

I remember sitting in a corner of his apartment - shaking, crying, colder than I have ever been. My sister said, “what guitar is this? I am taking all the expensive ones to sell and I will give you the money later.”

I just could barely whisper through the crying. My friend, Jeanette and her boyfriend had to come and talk for me and help me. I was right, he was right. So I cherish these records, these ashes, and these couple of guitars because they are all I will ever have of my father. These are the only things left of him - everything else is gone. And we are expected to just keep going?

I still don’t know how.