Today is May 4, 2025. I am sitting at a laptop that I reclaimed from my father’s house. I believe this was the most recent laptop of his. There were almost a dozen of them, along with every computer we’ve ever owned, except the IBM PC knockoff, which I think I remember him saying he’d sold or gutted. There were the TRS-80, Pcjr, IBM Aptiva, Gateway computers (including my college one), and a couple of newer HP/Compaq towers. I also found the old Pong game controller set—the only video game controller we were ever allowed to have, and it was only set up briefly while I was of age to even try to play it.

Such were a lot of things—whether it was the pool table with the ping pong table add-on, or the fishing and camping tackle or sports equipment. All from that first era of my parents trying to be parents with my adopted older brothers, and somehow dropped altogether after we moved to Missouri.

I recovered a lot of random old technology from the piles of trash and rat-poop+pee-infested boxes. An old Bell Howe Super 8 film projector and film cartridges. A game called Mr. Challenger I played as a kid (an early handheld educational game from Texas Instruments).

My dad would by a copy of something if he lost it—or, if he simply saw a bulk deal that was too good to pass up. I probably tossed upwards of $25k-$50k worth of stuff (worth that much when new) that was too destroyed by rats or lack of care, including boxes of specialty teas that had been opened once and left out, random tools and assorted electronic attachments too begrimed to save. I likely sent just as much off to Goodwill.

My parents saved all of their old bills and receipts, so there were bank statements, tax returns, bills, etc. from Missouri and even Colorado, which were 25 and 45 years ago respectively when we last lived in those states. I had no time to go through each and every single statement and connect with those banks and older service providers to ensure no $ was left behind and no $ was yet owed. I will be doing good to make it through all of the ones he currently had accounts with.

My dad left a jump drive with all of his passwords on it under this laptop, but all of the stuff on the table, including the laptop, was buried in a mountain of old mail and assorted food trash and tools. I just as likely might have tossed it, having pushed a lot of the pure junk out in a pile. I believe I missed an envelope of money that was referenced in the posthumous email he sent to drop after he died.

Fortunately, I found the correct drive within the pile of jump drives I’d accumulated from around the kitchen and the rest of the house. Unfortunately, there weren’t clear instructions for the PIN number on his current phone, but then fortunately, one of the other accounts in the list had a PIN number that worked. I needed the phone (rescued only recently from the Sheriff’s office) to get the Google account unlocked and reset. I somehow managed to successfully get into his main Google accounts, but I have yet to mess with the bank accounts where he said in the note I am named as beneficiary.

Why? For one, I know getting the money out won’t be as straightforward as I would ever like. Secondly, I am in the middle of a divorce my soon-to-be-ex wife sprung on me a week and a half before my dad shot himself. The money, once isolated and confirmed can be mine, will no doubt find it’s way into the hands of the ex’s attorney if I am quick to pull it out. Finally, I really just don’t want to deal with it. I didn’t care to deal with this to begin with, and I am needing to be razor-focused on keeping a decent relationship with my sons going, and keeping my current job.

So, the money sits there. The estate lawyer has told me that all of it can be mine independent of the court process to get the estate itself assigned over in my name, since my father had assigned me as a beneficiary before he died. Did he do it correctly, though? The will, according to the lawyer, was poorly drawn up (my dad likely used online service then had it notarized at the bank) and would get tied up in probate for a long time, so he recommended a separate process to execute the estate in my name. I am no lawyer, I am running on blind faith for that.

But, I don’t need the money, right now anyway. I am renting a shitty dump that is overpriced and floods every time I run the wash. The maintenance guy has been over twice to snake the plumbing outside and dug up half the front yard yesterday to replace old copper pipe with PVC pipe. I can’t buy a house until the divorce is finalized, anyway.

The cast of characters who have tried to help me with all of this is more than I might have hoped for—half a dozen estate sale people who didn’t want to touch the mess. The people who were initially engaged to help who wanted to haul everything to the dump for me. The guy I just touched base with, a contractor referred to me by my Aunt’s partner (who has tried so hard to help any way he could), who got into a snit with me over texts because of...well, it’s a long story.

I have to start somewhere, and so I will start with that day in March while the boys were on Spring Break. I was approaching my one-year anniversary at my current employer, and finally feeling like all of the dust and chaos from the past few years (unemployment, alcohol quitting/recovery) was clearing and we, as a family were finding our groove again. Admittedly, I still hadn’t found a way to get back into my wife’s good graces in terms of, say, even giving me a hug after a long and stressful business trip. But, we were fighting less and less. We had moments in conversation where I felt like the sparks were coming back. The boys and I seemed to be on a good, slow path of learning and playing together each week. I frankly saw nothing in our current family and marriage situation that necessitated a complete severing.

Shortly before coming up to Dallas, I had started to get vibes that my ex was planning machinations behind my back around how we would live (or not) together once up there. I asked her point blank shortly before moving if she planned on simply divorcing me once we got up here. She replied in a fashion similar to much of her comebacks: “...well, what do you plan to do?” I replied that I had no plans at all to divorce her, but needed some reassurance because I felt like things between her and her parents (that involved my and my sons’ futures) were being discussed behind my back already.

Shortly after coming to Dallas, we got into some heated argument in the morning. I honestly don’t recall what the argument was about specifically. We were almost always arguing about next steps for the boys, or I would say something to a child that she deemed too sarcastic or too scary (like trying to explain to our youngest what the consequences will be if he keeps hitting kids). For many years before I met my wife, I often felt like I myself might have had some undiagnosed mental illness such as Asperger’s as it was called at the time. I truly felt like as a child I was hardly ever heard or understood, or dismissed as a spoiled crybaby who had it so much better than anyone else in the house. So, I was and am by no means opposed to the idea that we need to listen and pay more attention to where the child is at in the moment they lose their shit and decide to hit a classmate. But, I also am 100% convinced that if you put your hand on a hot stove and get burned you will stop doing it, unless you have a severe mental disorder beyond anything your parents could handle on their own without full-time care in the house with you. If you are able to see clearly enough that you are headed toward something akin to getting your hand badly burned if you keep hitting other people, you might just get that reasonable fear of the consequences put in your head so you stop doing it.

But, the specifics of the fight that day are lost to me. What I do remember clearly, (as it precipitated a note from me immediately to her and a return back from work to clear things up) was that she was passing me in the hall in and glowering at me like she never had before. “If looks could kill…” came to mind, and I was feeling like we were both being overly precious with our own points of view/egos about the whole situation. I honestly couldn’t remember if this figure of speech meant someone is staring daggers at you or if someone is good looking enough they simply slay you. I know that sounds strange, but I even looked it up just now to confirm what the phrase meant. In that moment, I fumbled to come up with something similar, and said, “wow, you are looking like you want to knock my block off…” and I said it in such a way as if I were no different than some sitcom dad like Tim Allen saying it to my wife after she gets a little upset with me.

At that moment, she got this look on her face like she was ready to call the cops on me or something and said, “If you say something like that, you must be the one thinking of doing it, and I no longer feel safe around you,” or similar words. I was stunned beyond any amount of being stunned I thought one could possibly get. At first, I told myself she didn’t really believe this, and was just trying to somehow put one over on me. I went to work, felt sick to my stomach, turned around and drove back home and pleaded with her to see that I was just trying to lighten the moment with a common figure of speech that I had fumbled. “Right now, what I need you to do is just go to work and do your job,” she snapped at me.

I got to work, sat down, and wrote her an extended note, reiterating and stressing that I never once (then, now or ever) have thought of hitting her—and, simply the untruth of what she said—if one of us has said this they must be thinking of doing it—since when does another human being get to define what intentions/thoughts are actually happening in my head at any given time, anyway? To me it sounded like some random “truth” that a writer from one of her novels might have put out there. That, and the “truth” that we couldn’t possibly do couples counseling if we both aren’t in therapy.

So, this one moment seemed to have at least been acknowledged as a heated argument but not one where I had crossed any lines of violence in word or deed. Or so it seemed. But then, this day became the reference point in the “I’m filing for divorce” conversation that was sprung on me the first day at my job I got to leave early to go spend time with my boys. I tried to illustrate the progress of our relationship healing or getting better in terms of an overall trend—the same with my own outbursts of temper or simply taking too much of the stress of work and traffic back home with me. The trendline was going down, but I had quit the latest therapist due to her providing the same endless circles of non-improvement (and suggestions of things to try with my wife that always resulted in my wife telling me they didn’t work for her—love language, love notes, notes of gratitude, attempts at repair, etc.), while the Qi Gong medicine I was getting through this therapy seemed to be working wonders for both my mental and physical well-being. What’s more, I had been spending 30 min-hr each morning and usually each night in meditation, reading of Buddhist, Christian and Daoist texts, which (in my own dumb head anyway) seemed to be also helping keep me from lapsing into assuming the worst intentions of everyone around me and being so quick to jump to judgement, critique and sarcasm of others. I honestly and naively thought this was being noticed.

Not much was noticed, actually. But then, wasn’t that my childhood as well? Nobody seems to hear me, see me, or get me, and if I dare raise my voice slightly to be heard, I am suddenly angry, shouting and an ungrateful little bitch.

The ex noticed none of the love songs. I get that music isn’t her love language, but she knows that it is mine. Could she not have met me at least 1% of the way to think, maybe, perhaps, playing “First time ever I saw your face” or “Past Lives” by Borns every morning and night when she entered the room had the slightest bit to do with her? Even something on the nose like “Hallelujah” – “but you don’t really care for music, do ya?” -- well, that’s just some silly song from Shrek, right?

She noticed none of the extended conversations I would have with the boys. For example, I would tell the older boy that when his body goes through growth spurts, he may get hungry more often, and he could ask for food or grab a snack instead of just waiting for official dinner/snack time. Later, after the discussion, I might have said something like “L, you need to eat something more…” lightheartedly after we saw how much he weighed—totally in line with the arm curl exercises with light barbells he does every night, which she approves of. Her response was along the lines of “he’s just fine the way he is, you don’t need to be telling him that, he has enough self esteem issues as it is..” as if our son were some kind of complete baby who couldn’t understand the context in which comments are being provided. Moments like this get referenced and re-referenced, and so I back off—I stop giving as much input because I start to get concerned that I really am wrecking their precious spirits beyond simply giving them some grit and resilliance. Then, later, in discussions about why I am now divorce material, I am told that I am no longer providing much of anything of value to these boys aside from the money I drop into a bank account. Part of me wants desperately to get my wife to see so many men I have known from childhood and even the present day who contribute far less to their households than I did, yet somehow manage to remain in the married category. Men who spend all of their free time watching sports, going to whiskey/cigar/poker parties, etc., and expect the wife to basically be the nanny of the children until the boy is old enough to receive more manly inputs to form his character.

I get that I haven’t been the best dad in the world from the perspective of your average Millennial who wears their fatherhood on their sleeve and has it on full display on five different social media accounts. Could I have been driving them to more of their Scouting/Therapy/School events? Should I have been coming along on more of their outings? Quite frankly, I felt unwelcome, unwanted and unneeded any time I did attempt to get more involved.

Curiously enough, my ex’s own pathological need for independence and unwillingness to ask for any help at all seemed to mirror my dad’s with the exception that my dad never later would snap at me that I was actually just supposed to know when/where to help him and when not to. But, that aside, both my father and my ex simply didn’t know how to ask for help when they needed it. My ex told me I sighed heavily at her one time early in the marriage and so that was it for her asking for help. I frankly have no idea how she can think she’s found her assertive voice now (as she claimed during those periods where she was utterly contentious with whatever I happened to say) if she is still afraid of a heavy sigh or even a “no” when she asks for help.

My dad wasn’t so much afraid of hearing “no” when asking for help, as he had crafted this image of himself so exquisitely of being 100% independent and self-reliant that he couldn’t see that even allowing me to help him 10% of the time out there would have prolonged his health and life and COULD have allowed him to remain independently living.

My dad was terrified of ending up in a nursing home existence, and refused my help, and so what happened was that he grew increasingly ill from all of the rat poop and urine in his house, but blamed his continued COPD and increasing kidney disease solely on how he’d mistreated himself in younger years (smoking from age 19-55, drinking heavily at times, etc.)— mentioning the rat infestation to a healthcare professional might have gotten his independence taken away.

In the short time I was heads-down in the stuff (12 hrs a day for about 2 weeks), I felt my health declining rapidly. My nose was running constantly, my breathing grew weak, I felt kidney pain, etc. Going back into the house, the symptoms start to flare up. Imagine breathing that circulated air constantly and becoming less and less mobile and unwilling to go outside for anything. He literally created his own death chamber for himself but it wasn’t getting the job done fast enough. So, that’s when he emailed his one friend out there to call the Sheriff and took his life with a gunshot to the forehead.

My dad’s friend tried to call me all that evening, but I had mostly turned my phone off and didn’t have her name stored with the number—so, I associated the 512 calls with the dozens of spam calls I get from that area code each day. The next morning, I got a cryptic text about the Sheriff and my dead father and I looked the number up, and It was M’s business number. So I called her, and then called the Sheriff (who referred me to the funeral home), and headed to Austin to stay with my Aunt and then drive out to Bastrop to begin the long process of closing out the estate.

I had misplaced my dad’s house keys in the move up to Dallas, but luckily my Aunt found a copy. The house was as I had last seen it, but worse. The rats had gotten into birdseed and then would poop out the undigested husks everywhere. The piles of birdseed my wife and I had seen a couple years before were likely ratshit that had already started to accumulate. It made a lot more sense as to why my dad didn’t ever want me going into one of the back bedrooms (where the rat infestation was at it’s worst). Seeing the rats, he knew I might have decided that a nursing home was a better care environment for my dad, and he might have been correct.

There were valuable papers, tools and family keepsakes buried in boxes of trash and piles of trash. Hiring a service to do everything for me would have cost probably tens of thousands of more dollars and they would have likely tossed out the jump drive with the passwords, which would have meant I would have had to hire a forensic IT service to hack his devices (and perhaps they wouldn’t have even done this for me until after the court stuff cleared), and this would have cost thousands of dollars more.

But, I also had to finish up finding a place to rent. In the middle of trying to get my dad’s mess initially sorted out, and doing all that cleaning, I had to come back up to Dallas at times to secure the divorce dump I’m now renting. I also had scheduled a driver’s license renewal (it was required to be in person this time) in Carrollton some months before—and knew these license renewal were impossible to get again without babysitting the site for new appointments.

I went through hell, and I can’t say that I’m completely out of it yet. I will likely repeat myself many times over, but this will be the place where I continue to try to make sense out of it all..