Bloggin' On: Looking Back...Looking Forward (Part Two)

A view of man-made East Wind Lake, taken before I moved out of my former home in 2016. Photo Credit: © 2015 Alex Diaz-Granados (own work) 

Hi there, Dear Reader, and welcome once more to Bloggin' On, the feature section where I take off my hats of product reviewer and/or political commentator and just talk about things that are on my mind.

It's early morning on Monday, December 30, 2019, at least in my corner of Florida, and the sky is beginning to lighten as the sun rises ever so steadily over the horizon. Outside, the temperature is 71℉ (22℃) under cloudy skies; per the forecast on my PC's weather app, the high temperature is expected to reach 76℉ (25℃), it will remain mostly cloudy, and we may even see some rain. I haven't watched any weather updates on TV today, but just by looking at the forecast trends on my computer, it looks as though a weak cold front is passing through, as the high for tomorrow is only expected to reach 65℉ (19℃).

Tomorrow, of course, is the last day of 2019. It's also the last day of the 2010s, a decade that was marked by my mother Beatriz's final years, a total break in relations between my older half-sister and me, and a host of unexpected life changes that included a fight in probate court over Mom's estate, the sale of my house, and a cross-Florida move that was not in my original plans for "after Mom passed."

To be honest, I find that it's better to look at the past 10 years with a "the glass is half-full" attitude, even though I think my mother deserved a gentler and more dignified end-of-life experience than the one she had. I don't have a lot of enemies in this world, but as much as I dislike the ones that I have, I would not wish on them the various ailments my mom endured over the last decade and a half of her life. A scary bout of skin cancer, watermelon stomach, a spine that had literally turned to powder as a result of osteoporosis and several back injuries she suffered in her younger days, high blood pressure, and dementia all combined to rob my mother of her health and eventually her life. and it is a testament to her inner strength that she lived to be 86 before her body finally wore out in July of 2015.

It's been 10 years since Mom's final illness began to manifest itself; the holiday season of 2009 was the last one in which she cooked her usual yummy Christmas and New Year's dinners. She was still walking and doing her usual chores, although late in 2009 she started complaining about backaches that just didn't go away after she took her Tylenol Arthritis pills or rested up during her daily naps. She soldiered on until March of 2010, which is when her backaches not only increased in frequency but also in the intensity of the pain. After that, her health declined, made worse by my half-sister's incompetence (she refused to have Mom do her rehab in a clinic, and she caused my mom to fracture her right ankle when she - a nurse! - pushed her wheelchair out the front door facing forward rather than backward; the front door did not yet have a wheelchair ramp, so Mom literally fell face-down on the front steps and suffered injuries that could have been avoided had Vicky been more careful pushing that wheelchair.) and the depression that resulted from being confined to the downstairs bedroom.

I won't lie to you, Dear Reader, by telling you that I'm over the anger and hurt caused by my half-sister during the last five years of our mother's life. Vicky resented the fact that Mom handed over the reins of managing the household to me even though my half-sister is almost 13 years older than me and has lived on her own since she was 25, except for a disastrous two years where she lived with us in the East Wind Lake Village townhouse where Mom spent the last 37 years of her life. I wouldn't have minded if someone else had taken most of the decision-making duties in 2010, provided that that person was organized and paid bills on time.

However, Vicky was not that person; she often waits till the last minute to pay bills and prefers to do so in person at stores where payments can be made for utilities such as Bellsouth or Florida Power and Light. I don't know if she has changed over the past few years, but she had a history of having services cut for non-payment of bills. I was aware of this, so when Mom got so sick in 2010 that she could no longer run the household, I accepted Mom's decision to make me the decision-maker for the house. Vicky was furious, of course, and everything she did over the next five years reflected her anger and jealousy.

So, Dear Reader, here I am, a decade older (and hopefully wiser), living on the other side of Florida and not in the townhouse I inherited and had to fight for in Miami-Dade's court system, only to give it up because I couldn't afford to repair, renovate, and upkeep it. I miss it at times still, especially when I realize how dependent I am on my significant other for almost everything. But as I wrote yesterday in this blog:

I don't understand how Mom realistically expected me to live in the three-bedroom. two-bathroom townhouse she bought in 1978 from blueprints and a 1977 visit to the model homes in what was then part of Fountainbleau Park. Not only was the house in pretty bad shape by 2015 (we discovered it had termite damage when Mom was too ill and too poor to deal with that) and needed an estimated $40,000 in repairs and renovations, but the homeowners' association (HOA) maintenance fee (which was a whopping $400 a month when I last paid it in 2017) alone would take up a huge chunk of my monthly Social Security disability check.  When I sat down with a friend not long after Mom died to make a monthly budget, we figured out that in order to survive I'd need a monthly income of $1000, and that's without any "extras" such as a newspaper subscription or occasional Amazon purchases. 

The only way that things would have gone the way that Mom planned was if my half-sister and I got along well enough so that she'd be willing to help me out in some way. Mom knew we would not be compatible as housemates; we are too dissimilar in temperament and preferences in food, entertainment, and even life philosophies, so living together was never an option for my half-sister and me. Plus there is the inconvenient fact that Vicky and I detest each other; I've never understood Vicky's antipathy toward me, although Mom once explained to me that part of it stems from envy and toxic rivalry on my half-sister's part. I can tell you, though, that my dislike of my one-and-only half-sister is the result of many slights and abuses by Vicky that I endured through much of my life till I decided enough was enough. 

Anyway, the past is...the past, and there is no way to undo any of the decisions that were made almost a decade ago. The issues between Vicky and me stretch even further than that, dating as far back as 1972, the year in which my older half-sister was forced by my grandparents to move from Colombia to live with us in Miami after certain incidents that embarrassed most of the family during Vicky's short-lived attempt to live in Bogota because she hated the United States. Mom and I had to move back to South Florida after I had a cerebral hemorrhage shortly after my ninth birthday, but Vicky refused to come with us then. I'm not going to reveal the social faux pas she committed, but my grandparents insisted that Mom take her back under her own wing because they did not want the family reputation stained by Vicky's libertine nature. 

I can only try to make the best of my new life with my new family here in my corner of Florida. I've been here for almost four years and I have not outworn my welcome. I get along with the four persons I share the house with, and I pay my fair share of the bills and other expenses, so I am not a burden to my significant other. And our little dog loves me, so there's that, too.