Not a sad story about my uncle. Just that my uncle is (was) a sad story.
Born as the youngest by 7 years of a police officer and a housewife, raised to believe he was a massive talent in everything he did and could do no wrong, spared from every consequence of his stupidity. By the age of 56, he was twice-divorced with a son from each marriage that he never financially supported, had failed at starting a couple of businesses, and had never held what most would call a "real" job. He was actually reasonably talented at photography, construction, and fabrication, but he was too high on himself to put in the work to make anything out of it. To sum up his life in a single word: squandered.
He was consumed by greed, and unwilling to put in the work to generate any wealth on his own he was 100% ok with screwing other people out of it. Some examples:
1. When I was young and he needed money, my parents tried to help him by paying him to do some renovations on a house after some renters moved out. Stuff like sanding and staining doors and cabinets. He took the money and didn't complete the work.
2. When my brother told our cousin about the food truck business he was starting, he and my uncle went and bought the matching domain name and tried to ransom it for partnership in the business that they had no part whatsoever in starting or even conceiving.
3. After his second divorce, he got a friend (who is a veterinarian) to help him get diagnosed with a traumatic brain injury so he could collect government disability. The incident he claimed caused the injury was him knocking himself on the head unloading an air compressor out of his truck. He had gone to his vet friend to get stitches. There was no TBI, there was no brain damage, but he got it. The hilarious part though is that the windfall he thought he was going to get due to it being paid retroactively a lump sum for almost a decade, mostly went to his second wife for unpaid child support. xD
4. Not so much screwing anybody out of money, but he let his parents raise both of his sons because he didn't want to sacrifice any of his leisure time to be a parent. As usual, his parents enabled his behavior and stepped up to watch them on his custody days while he went out and lived his life.
In his later years, he was living in a modest house that my grandparents bought for him, while using his disability pay and $1500/mo his parents gave him from their retirement pension to maintain the appearance of an older bachelor, if not successful, at least not a worthless parasite to society. He dated a series of women, usually with money) that he could fool into seeing him as a project they could fix. One of them bought him a $70k truck. He was the most textbook example I've ever encountered, and maybe ever will, of the Machiavellian narcissistic personality. His relationships were based entirely on what he could gain from it.
The craziest part of it was how forgiving my mom was. When he did something completely outrageous she would cut off contact for awhile, but eventually he'd come around and apologize and welcome him back. She was probably the only person on the planet that legitimately cared about him, even in spite of the turd that he was. She was always there to listen when his life was in the toilet, and on a handful of occasions when he was talking about ending it all she was the one to hop in the car, drive an hour each way to go talk him off a ledge.
Now, for his biggest scam of all.
My grandfather (uncles father) was given a cancer diagnosis in 2016. Prior to an operation to remove the tumor from his lung, he and my grandmother got their will all tied up. Through conversations with my brother and my parents, we all knew what it said - that the house they had bought for my uncle to live in would go to my uncle, and everything else would be split 50/50 between he and my mother.
In 2019 my grandmothers memory began to fail and she was diagnosed with dementia, "probably alzheimers". Some time after that the Alzheimers diagnosis was confirmed. My uncle moved in with her to take care of her, and distracted my mom with stories about how he'd finally found Jesus and was delivered from all of the trauma he experienced as a child, while he gaslighted my Alzheimers patient grandmother into turning against his sister, and got his first ex wife to help give him my grandmothers power of attorney. Once he did that, he transferred all of her assets (her house and their ~$380k savings) into his name and began spending it. At some point in early 2022 my mom finally cornered him on a phone call and got him to admit to having done the power of attorney on his own (they had been talking about having it done together). He expressed to my mom that he and my grandmother didn't want her meddling and she shouldn't come visit anymore, warning that he had cameras set up around the house and would see if she came while he wasn't there. We suspect this was because he wouldn't be able to hide his spending nearly $50k on construction tools and building a barndominium in my grandmothers back yard. From what we've gathered, he also bought a lake house, possibly a boat, he was traveling a lot. He also had a new will written up to leave all of their assets to him and some believe that my grandmothers signature on that will may be forged.
On March 17th, he went down to Dallas and bought a new truck, parked it in his oldest sons driveway and gave him the keys before coming back home. On March 19th, he made a few calls to people he cared about to say goodbye, I love you, etc., except absent on the call list this time was his sister, my mom. March 20th he was found on the floor dead next to a few empty pill bottles and a fifth of Dickel.
Through phone calls and talking to the very few people that remained close to him, we learned that my great aunt (grandpas sister) had agreed to move up to OK from the Dallas area to help him take care of my grandma. She has money left to her by her husband, who was wealthy due to founding and selling a geology consulting firm that did business in oil/gas. But It's in a living will - she can use the money but when she's gone, it goes to her stepdaughters. Her stepdaughters had recently found that account empty and we believe she may have promised my uncle that money, but we learned that on 3/18 she called him and told him she wasn't going to be able to come up because her health and general frailty would not allow her to move. One of his friends believe that news was "the last straw" for him. When hearing the news of his suicide she expressed her disappointment that "that little shit went ahead and did it...we were supposed to do that together".
Since then we've learned that the entire $380k is gone, and he had his own will written to give everything to his two sons. They're 100% bought in to his delusions of grandeur and fail to acknowledge, or even realize, that the "inheritance" that his dad STOLE from their grandmother and left to them ISN'T an inheritance because my grandmother is STILL ALIVE, and now penniless, left only with my grandfathers law enforcement retirement income to try to take care of her not-insignificant healthcare needs. He also left his son her power of attorney and though he's promised to sell the house and put it in a trust to paid for her care, he's about as trustworthy as his old man and we fully expect that if he does it at all, he's going to penny pinch the hell out of it so he has more to himself when she passes. Though she has no authority at all on the matter, my mom asked that either they visit her 3x a week, or that she be placed in a facility near her so she could do it. They were happy to put her up here, to the point that it seems that as long as they've got the money they don't need anything else from the woman that raised them while their dad couldn't be bothered.
The last thing my mom said to him, on the call last year where he came clean about taking everything? Proverbs 1:19.
Born as the youngest by 7 years of a police officer and a housewife, raised to believe he was a massive talent in everything he did and could do no wrong, spared from every consequence of his stupidity. By the age of 56, he was twice-divorced with a son from each marriage that he never financially supported, had failed at starting a couple of businesses, and had never held what most would call a "real" job. He was actually reasonably talented at photography, construction, and fabrication, but he was too high on himself to put in the work to make anything out of it. To sum up his life in a single word: squandered.
He was consumed by greed, and unwilling to put in the work to generate any wealth on his own he was 100% ok with screwing other people out of it. Some examples:
1. When I was young and he needed money, my parents tried to help him by paying him to do some renovations on a house after some renters moved out. Stuff like sanding and staining doors and cabinets. He took the money and didn't complete the work.
2. When my brother told our cousin about the food truck business he was starting, he and my uncle went and bought the matching domain name and tried to ransom it for partnership in the business that they had no part whatsoever in starting or even conceiving.
3. After his second divorce, he got a friend (who is a veterinarian) to help him get diagnosed with a traumatic brain injury so he could collect government disability. The incident he claimed caused the injury was him knocking himself on the head unloading an air compressor out of his truck. He had gone to his vet friend to get stitches. There was no TBI, there was no brain damage, but he got it. The hilarious part though is that the windfall he thought he was going to get due to it being paid retroactively a lump sum for almost a decade, mostly went to his second wife for unpaid child support. xD
4. Not so much screwing anybody out of money, but he let his parents raise both of his sons because he didn't want to sacrifice any of his leisure time to be a parent. As usual, his parents enabled his behavior and stepped up to watch them on his custody days while he went out and lived his life.
In his later years, he was living in a modest house that my grandparents bought for him, while using his disability pay and $1500/mo his parents gave him from their retirement pension to maintain the appearance of an older bachelor, if not successful, at least not a worthless parasite to society. He dated a series of women, usually with money) that he could fool into seeing him as a project they could fix. One of them bought him a $70k truck. He was the most textbook example I've ever encountered, and maybe ever will, of the Machiavellian narcissistic personality. His relationships were based entirely on what he could gain from it.
The craziest part of it was how forgiving my mom was. When he did something completely outrageous she would cut off contact for awhile, but eventually he'd come around and apologize and welcome him back. She was probably the only person on the planet that legitimately cared about him, even in spite of the turd that he was. She was always there to listen when his life was in the toilet, and on a handful of occasions when he was talking about ending it all she was the one to hop in the car, drive an hour each way to go talk him off a ledge.
Now, for his biggest scam of all.
My grandfather (uncles father) was given a cancer diagnosis in 2016. Prior to an operation to remove the tumor from his lung, he and my grandmother got their will all tied up. Through conversations with my brother and my parents, we all knew what it said - that the house they had bought for my uncle to live in would go to my uncle, and everything else would be split 50/50 between he and my mother.
In 2019 my grandmothers memory began to fail and she was diagnosed with dementia, "probably alzheimers". Some time after that the Alzheimers diagnosis was confirmed. My uncle moved in with her to take care of her, and distracted my mom with stories about how he'd finally found Jesus and was delivered from all of the trauma he experienced as a child, while he gaslighted my Alzheimers patient grandmother into turning against his sister, and got his first ex wife to help give him my grandmothers power of attorney. Once he did that, he transferred all of her assets (her house and their ~$380k savings) into his name and began spending it. At some point in early 2022 my mom finally cornered him on a phone call and got him to admit to having done the power of attorney on his own (they had been talking about having it done together). He expressed to my mom that he and my grandmother didn't want her meddling and she shouldn't come visit anymore, warning that he had cameras set up around the house and would see if she came while he wasn't there. We suspect this was because he wouldn't be able to hide his spending nearly $50k on construction tools and building a barndominium in my grandmothers back yard. From what we've gathered, he also bought a lake house, possibly a boat, he was traveling a lot. He also had a new will written up to leave all of their assets to him and some believe that my grandmothers signature on that will may be forged.
On March 17th, he went down to Dallas and bought a new truck, parked it in his oldest sons driveway and gave him the keys before coming back home. On March 19th, he made a few calls to people he cared about to say goodbye, I love you, etc., except absent on the call list this time was his sister, my mom. March 20th he was found on the floor dead next to a few empty pill bottles and a fifth of Dickel.
Through phone calls and talking to the very few people that remained close to him, we learned that my great aunt (grandpas sister) had agreed to move up to OK from the Dallas area to help him take care of my grandma. She has money left to her by her husband, who was wealthy due to founding and selling a geology consulting firm that did business in oil/gas. But It's in a living will - she can use the money but when she's gone, it goes to her stepdaughters. Her stepdaughters had recently found that account empty and we believe she may have promised my uncle that money, but we learned that on 3/18 she called him and told him she wasn't going to be able to come up because her health and general frailty would not allow her to move. One of his friends believe that news was "the last straw" for him. When hearing the news of his suicide she expressed her disappointment that "that little shit went ahead and did it...we were supposed to do that together".
Since then we've learned that the entire $380k is gone, and he had his own will written to give everything to his two sons. They're 100% bought in to his delusions of grandeur and fail to acknowledge, or even realize, that the "inheritance" that his dad STOLE from their grandmother and left to them ISN'T an inheritance because my grandmother is STILL ALIVE, and now penniless, left only with my grandfathers law enforcement retirement income to try to take care of her not-insignificant healthcare needs. He also left his son her power of attorney and though he's promised to sell the house and put it in a trust to paid for her care, he's about as trustworthy as his old man and we fully expect that if he does it at all, he's going to penny pinch the hell out of it so he has more to himself when she passes. Though she has no authority at all on the matter, my mom asked that either they visit her 3x a week, or that she be placed in a facility near her so she could do it. They were happy to put her up here, to the point that it seems that as long as they've got the money they don't need anything else from the woman that raised them while their dad couldn't be bothered.
The last thing my mom said to him, on the call last year where he came clean about taking everything? Proverbs 1:19.
