Pizza on Sunday Morning

I offered to be a surrogate mom for my sister if fertility treatments with husband two also failed and I spent a month serving as an unpaid nanny after she did have a kid so she could get excellent care for her not quite preemie baby that arrived slightly early after much pregnancy drama AND qualify for a nice chunk of change in a government buy out for quitting at the right time.

Once, I helped her redo her master bedroom and guest bath while visiting. To her shock, the house assessed for thousands more than she expected when she refinanced. 

The smooth talking ever so superficially polite Southern gentleman who assessed the property on short notice after calling 30 minutes before showing up "because he just happened to be in the neighborhood and would we MIND if he dropped by TODAY" actually commented on how much work I was doing on her house and made some remark about "You must be welcome here anytime."

I guess she didn't connect the dots, no. 

Her first husband assaulted her for leaving him. It was ugly. She suffered PTSD. 

I spent years being supportive and helping her recover.  That's just what sisters do, am I right?

One year, I spent six hours straight on the phone with her on the anniversary of the assault to help her cope. The next day, I drove a thousand miles.

May 2024. I was homeless, having been illegally evicted. My initial plans to take a train someplace more affordable and promptly get back into housing didn't pan out.

So, long story short, I talked to my sons and asked if they wanted to see their dying grandmother one last time. They said "yes" and I called my mother and ASKED if she would like to see the three of us and told her explicitly "I'm not asking to live with you. Do you want to see us one last time?"

She said "yes."

A total stranger bought us bus tickets to get home. My mother was no longer in Columbus at her house. She was in Atlanta at my sister's house.

No, I wasn't welcome to visit my dying mother in Atlanta to shorten a brutal bus trip and save a stranger a few bucks. I needed to go to Columbus ANYWAY, with a layover at some ungodly predawn hour in Atlanta. 

So I traveled further making MY life harder AND then my sister put our dying mother through unnecessary hell by driving her to Columbus. I'm beginning to think she might be a sadist.

I passed through Atlanta on the way to Columbus and arrived fried where my asshole brother acted like I was stupid rather than bedraggled for saying "We could order pizza." on a Sunday morning at 9am. In recounting the anecdote in coming weeks of travel, multiple people snorted about what a jackass he was before I got to the punchline that a week later in an unincorporated podunk village, I was eating pizza at 9am in a gas station on Sunday morning. 

My brother kicked us back out into the street basically as soon as mom left again for Atlanta and also accused me of being there with my hand out, trying to get something materially out of the situation. 

Well, technically he picked a fight over BS, leveled ridiculous accusations, informed us we had X number of days and then we needed to go and my son said "I'm not putting up with this." and quietly packed our bags and we left promptly. Both I and my brother misunderstood what my son meant. I thought he was going for a walk rather than listen to my brother's crap.

Should I win the lottery and give neither of my siblings one thin dime and stop taking their phone calls, that's the short version of WHY.