The shifting story

[fbhjr]

Back in March I wrote about my brother and an old native pipe my father theoretically inherited:
https://fbhjr.dreamwidth.org/1630229.html or https://fbhjr.livejournal.com/2026/03/17/

i have continued to talk with my brother about once a week.
My sister died alone and it took weeks until anyone found her body. Now that my brother lives alone I try and make sure he’s still going once a week, just in chase. Yes, he’s younger than me and Anne was 15 years older, but still…

Hi game of “find something Frank wants” continues. Despite the official assessment that he is mentally disabled, my brother does not forget a single thing I say and often brings it up again weeks or months later.
This time the pipe came around again.

“Remember the pipe dad had?” He asked.
“I remember the story. I never saw it,” I replied.
“When mom had it appraised they said it was carved out of a stone from Arizona.”
“Did they?” (My father’s descriptions had always described it as clay. I’m not saying a stone from the other side of the continent couldn’t have made it here 250 years ago to be put into a clay pipe, but it strikes me as very unlikely.)
“He said it was a common stone there, so not worth much. So, he said the pipe had only sentimental value.”
“That’s not unexpected.”
“So, he offered mom $500 for it and she took it.”
“That’s a lot of sentiment.”
“What?”
“$500 is a lot of sentiment. Sentimental value usually means no cash value. $500 is more than sentimental.”
“Oh, yeah.”
As I’ve said before there is no doubt in my mind my mother would have sold it for a penny if she could get it. And, the odds she’d have found a good home for it are low. But, that’s better than it being destroyed.

He made a concerted effort with the trains again too.
“There are a lot of dad’s old trains in the basement,” he said.
“I’m sure they’re not in good condition, but you could probably still sell them and get some money for them,” I replied.
“Your old trains are here too!”
“Mom was very clear she threw all my stuff away years ago.”
“Not your trains!”
“She said she threw it all in the trash.”
“Your old trains were the only thing from the storage shed she kept!”
“That doesn’t seem very likely.”
“She didn’t throw away the engines.”
“Well, sell them too.”
“I don’t think I could.”
“Next time you talk to your lawyer, tell him you need one of his interns to come and help you sell a bunch of stuff on eBay. Offer the intern 10 to 20% of the money and I’m sure they’ll help.”
“Maybe I’ll throw them away!”
“That would be wasteful. You should take them to a flea market and sell them. You wouldn’t get much that way, but you’d get more than throwing them away.”
“Don’t you want them?”
“I’d take my old engines rather than you throw them in the trash, but I’d rather you sold them and got the money.”
“There’s a trash can full of train track!”
“A round green trash can about 2 feet across and 4 feet high with a round lid,” I said. “Dad used to keep all his track in it.”
“Did you see it last time you were here?”
“No. Last time I was there was after dad’s funeral 26 years ago and I didn’t go in the basement. I probably saw that last in 1981 or 1982. I don’t think I went in the basement after that. And, I’m sure I didn’t use any of his track since 1980 or so.”
“Don’t you want that stuff?”
“No. I’ve got way too much junk as it is. The last thing I need is trash cans full of 90 year old model train track. Sell it off. There are folks out there that will want it. Get some money for it and put it in your bank account.”

My mother had the habit of finding something I’d want and holding it over me to get what she wanted out of me. Often just to give it away and hurt me.
I don’t know if he’s playing that same game or not. Does he want me to say I’d like that stuff and then get rid of it?
My father collected a lot of weird stuff. And, there are things from my youth I abandoned when I broke off relationship with my parents. I’ve never expected to see any of it again, and I really don’t care about it.
There are a lot of folks stuff in that house. My parents, my brother my sister, some of my old stuff, my father’s first wife’s stuff he never threw away, some of her mother’s stuff from when she lived there 65 years ago.
And, it’s all my brother’s now.
He should see anything of value, then dump everything else.

Then there is my brother’s maybe significant other?
At my mother’s funeral they said they now go by Marilyn. But, my brother still calls them Ron.
I knew they used to take trips together and have long assume they were together romantically.
But, not using their preferred name makes me wonder about that now.
My brother told me that the two of them had gone on a cruise from Rome to Barcelona. That sounded nice until he mentioned my mother had been there with them.
Maybe all their trips out to the end of Cape Cod together to “look at the lighthouses” wasn’t a euphemism?

I don’t know.
I’d like to think he has someone to care about him. And, that more than half a century forced into the closed by my mother screaming at people “he’s not gay!” just takes him a while to get free from.

Of course, part of that is greed on my part. If Marilyn/Ron moved in with him and they lived happily together, the I wouldn’t have to keep checking on him to make sure he isn’t dead for a couple of months before someone notices like with Anne.
I could go back to ignoring him like I did for the last 30 years and not have to ponder these weird conversations with him.
Yeah, he’s my brother.
Yeah, I’m selfish.

There’s a quote from the Sandman comic that always resonated with me:
“If we had not been family, why then we could have had nothing to do with each other and both our lives would have been enriched. Instead we were siblings and this was, to say the least, unfortunate.”

Comments

[meowmensteen]

I'm going through that kind of thing right now with my old stuff. It may or may not be given away. There are some things I really rue about not still having, but there's no way in hell I'd let my ex know how much it means to me. He'd just use it to get me to interact with him more. It's better to mentally let the stuff go.

[ravena_kade]

I know my sister is cared for, but there is a part of me that wonders what would happen if she ends up alone as she is the younger and very much healthier. She only has 2 other friends and they are decades older than her. In my brain I have said that the 2 family would be here is she ever had to come home. I worry, but I dont want to live with her in a small space.