Shouting into the void

(Warning:  This post is just something I need to get off my chest.  Nothing else.)

My father & step-family spent Christmas waiting for my Stepmom to fade to black in hospice after she suffered an absolutely catastrophic brain aneurysm that week.  Dad was adamant that I not interrupt my holiday with Mom.  Plus a bunch of airports were digging themselves out from under some dreckish weather.  The memorial service (read: scattering of ashes) will be sometime during the more congenial part of the coming year.  So home I returned without ever seeing anyone from that side of the family.

All this went down mere weeks after my father regaled me with the saga of the guest bathroom remodeling and plans for doing the same with the master bathroom in a few years.  At the time, I damned near danced because it meant that he & my Stepmom felt vibrant enough to see themselves getting the use out of the work for years to come. 

When, a few years ago, I called Dad with the details of my sister's funeral, he sounded old.   That was a new experience for me.  But when I called immediately after receiving the news about the aneurysm, he sounded old and beaten.

Then today a completely unexpected call from Dad.  Who sounded more chipper, I'll grant you.  But he was calling because he needed my "official" legal name, SSN, etc. to change the beneficiary info. on all his financial stuff.

Now let's get one thing straight.  To say that financial security is A Big Deal for my father is an understatement large enough to have its own gravitational field.  Otherwise, right now I would be climbing the f***ing walls at the possible implications of that conversation.

That being said...dammitohellalready--what a craptastic feeling to be schlepping around the rest of the day.  It's not what you think.  It's not like I haven't--intellectually at least--squared with losing the 'rents.  (Dearest has already lost both, so don't think that I don't appreciate that, either.)  Also, it's not like I've just been set up for some nasty inheritance fight with my step-siblings--they're all adults and none of them shallow.

It's just don't want to inherit anything, particularly not money.  See, I'm not at all cool with how he made some of it, and I'd prefer to keep my hands clean of that karma.  Okay, there are a few pieces of furniture that I wouldn't turn down, just so I can see them in my mother's living room again.   (There was some disagreement over that kind of thing during the divorce, but I'm sooooo done with sorting out the he-said-she-said; having the stupid things back would shut that up forever.  Or had darned well better shut it up, anyway.)

But I digress.

Mainly I just don't feel the need or desire to be provided-for.  Partly, it's the independent streak talking.  Partly because I inflicted a lot of grief on myself (and, let's face it, plenty of others) by holding onto the anger over that divorce.  I try not to mix "stuff" (including money) and my feelings for people.  (Note the use of the word "try"--no, I don't always succeed where my money shows no--or negative--return on investment.)  I don't believe that Dad does that kind of fire-walling.  So I can't shake the feeling that leaving me anything other than a few odds-n-ends (of sentimental value) is a pay-off of sorts.

In which case, "something" is actually worse than nothing.  Debts to the past aren't fungible.  And I don't want to pretend that they are.  This puts me between the Scylla and Charybis of hurting someone at the end of his life with my version of the truth, and having to compromise who I am.  And I can't see a way around that Kobayashi Maru.

Yet.  If the 'verse grants me a bonus shot of luck--and I've been far, far luckier than I will ever deserve already--I have years to figure something out.