My trip last week to Arizona.

Alright, some of you might remember my fear of going to phoenix last week.

My brother and I rented a 24’ truck and packed all of our mother’s belongings into it to bring back to Chicago to sell, and to divide up what we wanted to keep. We did this because our other brother that lives just 7 miles away from our mothers house was threatening to have all her belongings thrown into a garbage dumpster if we didn’t empty the house, later he changed his mind and wanted all the belongings to go to auction, and that if we wanted to get any personal items we would have to pay the highest bid to the auctioneer (never mind the fact that he took out the stuff he wanted already!!).

We get to phoenix Monday night, its 112* outside. Get to our moms house and soon find out that the AC unit for half of the house is broken. The bedroom AC unit is much smaller, but is working good. We work till midnight organizing stuff in the house along with reminiscing.

Tuesday morning I get a hold of a repairman for the AC unit. He says it’ll be $3000 for replace the condenser with a new r22 unit. He also tells us that it looked as though the unit broke down at least two weeks ago. So we get a hold of our idiot brother, since he has power of attorney for the estate, and ask him for 3 grand to repair the AC unit. He gets p-o’ed at us for not calling him first and that he has a buddy that can fix it for half that amount, and that he’d be there by 6pm. Well, 6pm comes and goes, it wasn’t until Wednesday night that his buddy shows up!! By this time my brother and I have the house pretty well cleaned out and we ask the guy when can he get the AC unit working, he replies that the soonest is this Saturday!! Didn’t matter though, my brother and I left Thursday afternoon to go visit our mother at the nursing home. While we’re there, guess who shows up! That’s right, the ass hole. We were able to visit mom for 15 minutes. All I could think of was how my idiot oldest brother would always temp a confrontation. He would always say “wanna go out side…” for a fight. I told my wife that one of these days I was going to take him up on his request, but being at my mother’s nursing home wouldn’t be the place.

My A-Hole brother and his wife took every single dollar they could find in the house. We know this because my mother was a spend thrift, she kept track of every dollar she made and made sure that there was some stashed in every piggy bank, sugar bowl, or anything else that an old person would keep money in. The most we found were two rolls of nickels in her makeup drawer.

It was a very long drive home. Over 35 hours!! Believe me that truck was not made for comfort!! Nor power!! It averaged about 7 to 8 miles per gallon. Cost ME over $700 in fuel alone. My other brother from Chicago doesn’t have the financial stability that my wife and I have, so I paid for the whole trip, airline tickets, truck rental, and all. He did buy me a hamburger at Jack-N-the box though!!! It was all worth it when we found out that my mother kept a journal from 1954 to 1973!! We also found an old audio recording of their marriage vows from 1954!!! None of us boys knew they existed and they would have been thrown in the dumpster, or auctioned off to some stranger. That’s what made the whole trip worth while.

We’re home now, safe and sound. My oldest brother in Chandler Arizona now has no biological family. None of his three brothers will ever forgive him for what he’s done to our mother, or each other. His children and wife still post negative comments on face book, trying to provoke an argument. We are certain that he will squander what is left of our mother and fathers hard earned money that they wished to give to us as an inheritance. He has control of the bank accounts; he is a very crocked individual that has no morals. Funny, our parents gave him the most love, also gave him what ever he wanted, but my other brothers and I have the memories, and each other. He can’t take that from us.

There are other things we found, I won’t mention them for fear of my oldest brother some how finding out and would want a percentage of, but we all thought they were lost along time ago. It was a very very pleasant surprise when my brother mike brought it out. Seems my mother was able to hide things pretty good!!