Dear Diary,

A conspiracy theory is only crazy, is only paranoia, when there is no evidence that can be seen, right? Like when someone says that a person is stalking them but can never produce another person who has seen this, a video of that person stalking them, etc. Not the greatest example because when it comes to stalking sometimes evidence is hard to find but you know what I mean, right?

So anyway, when my dad died 5 years ago I never thought anything wierd, even though he was 62 and never had heart problems before. He had even told me he had gone to the cardiologist a few months before and my dad, being the baby about doctors, hospitals, roller coasters, heights, lots of stupid fears, got a certificate from the doctor (like a child gets) of a great check up. I believe he even showed me this certificate.

But we have a family history on his dads side of heart problems, all my grandpas brothers dying young EXCEPT for my grandpa (his dad) who lived to the age of 87. And, my grandpa who had once had a quadruple bypass, was probably at least 300 to 400 pounds the entire time I walked the planet, died of something other than old age because he even got old enough to get dimensia.

And at the time he died, I didnt think anything odd. Not until I sat in a jail cell, next to a nut conspiricist....who thought herself once a journalist who had exposed all these conspiricies in the eighties, thought her own mother part of some "black widow" group intent on killing husbands and taking their money. But, just her stories no longer made sense there was however, some hint of oddity abouy my own fathers death that rang in my mind. That no matter how crazy the story sounded, the circustances surrounding my own fathers death were just crazy.

But, you can tell me. Ill tell you exactly what happened and how I remember it.

I was at my grandmothers house in Eastlake, Ohio. My grandfather had died 6 months before, maybe a little more, and my grandmother was sick herself now, probably beginning her descent into her own death due to grief. Her family was everything to her. Nothing meant more. And her husband, while I knew he meant the world to her I did not realize until after he died that she really couldnt go on without him on this planet.

I had seen them express their love for one another when he went for heart surgery years before, as he told her his goodbyes. While I didnt hear much of it, I had heard enough to know that their 63 years of marriage had really meant everything to them. They were the world to on another neither would really survive without the other and I should have known and done more....

So I get a call from my stepmothers sister. She told me my dad was in the hospital, up the road at Lake West where my stepmother worked and I needed to come. In the past I have had this experience, heart attack calls, on 3 of my grandparents. Each time I went they were awake and had been told they needed surgery. All except my grandmother who had only had a minor stroke. I believe they only kept her for a few days of observation and put her on cumidin.

When I arrived at the emergency room I was taken to a room I had never been in attached to the ER. That was odd in itself as I had been in this place a zillion times before. But, my stepmom worked here and if she did not get VIP treatment, she demanded it. She is just like that. Pushy, loud, demanding, always gets everything she wants. Always does what she wants. She is a recovery room nurse herself.

And when there are nurses depending on what they do they act differently. But, this is what gets me about medical professionals and nurses in particular. My own mother is a nurse too. She does not however work in the thick of surgery or really with patients at all. She worked all her life in pediatric nursing, mostly as an LPN at that time. Then she worked for a foot doctor for a bit and I have no idea what a nurse does in that position but not that much medical care or knowledge that is very useful to extreme medical situations gets passed on. Then she went on to answer phones in pediatric nursing, went back to get her masters in business administration and worked on that end of things. Scheduling nurses, doctors, running the pediatric office. Not patient care.

Making sure the patients got good care yes, but she didnt know how to do this. My mother didnt even know much about my own medical problems when I had them, well nothing really, like diabetes or liver issues, anything adult, stuff like that. And when my mother went to get her business admin. degree idk why but she signed up for a course on the Matrix. Like the Matrix movie and she had to understand it which no matter how many times I explained it, she did not. So, when someone cant understand simple complex thinking, philosophicalish things like the matrix....well she doesnt know much or cant process things like that.

But I digress. So when I was 23 I was pregnant and had a baby born early. At 23 and a half weeks. At that time, babies that early would not live. Were not likely at all. My pregnant OB who delivered my son wanted me to have him and let him die. I thought about it. I could not do that.

So he was born the day before September 11 and while the planes crashed into the towers on the television behind me I sat with my dying son, willing God to have him live. The one thing I hated was that all the medical professionals I interacted with, even the ones taking care of my son, all looked at me like I was torturing him, and wasting their time. The worst of all was my own mother looked at me in this way.

So, when in the thick of things, even my own mother looked at me like I was wasting my child, giving him the chance to live or die (I did not want to take away his one chance, the one time he had on this earth...so I gave him 3 days until it looked hopeless and I thought him had given a good fight but was needed elsewhere....)

And that is why what happened in the hospital with my father confuses me. Maybe I should set up the background on the life my father shared with his wife, my stepmother. She is a woman who wants material things. If her mother buys a diamond braclet or her sister, she wants one. But my father never had the money to buy her anything because he didnt even want to work a normal nine to five with his accountant degree. I dont know why my father spent so much time at home, many say it is because he liked to drink. All I know that he was waiting to get his first government check (which came 3 weeks after he died) and his last job wittled down to part time work without any good pay.

I remember one time in my twenties, when my father was sharing with me the position he had finally found to work in. He had been on unemployment for almost six months or more (I really cant remember) and had been laid off from the car dealership he worked at, run by this rich kid given the gift by his father. And actually, this kid was the character played by Chris Farley in that car dealership funny movie that was made, written and produced by his college roomates. I do miss my dads funny stories about his stupid boss.

The one who couldnt understand that when my dad wrote checks, the money would still be in the account until the check went through the process of transferring payment into another account, you know a check takes time to cash...not automatic like atm transactions, etc. Well, if my dad wrote a check and the money was still in the account his boss could not understand why he couldnt spend it. No matter how many times my dad said, "I wrote a check for the amount but it takes a few days for the bank to process it, take the money an transfer it to where it should go," the boss just wanted to spend it. And not like once, he wanted to spend it again and again. It was always like...how can this guy be that stupid but then, as time went on and stories mounted it was like, what could this guy not possibly do, as stupid as he is? Just a rich kid who thought money was endless.,,...And Im sure to his boss money grew on trees, credit was something you never paid back but when it came to paying my dad a salary.....

But my stepmom, here was a woman who wanted things, a nice home and car. My dad was even ashamed of his own parents because my grandma was frugal and sort of a little hill-billyish, at least compared to my stepmoms family. My stepmoms sister divorced her hillbilly husband fairly early and married Don, who owned his own business. And he made decent money for a small business owner, supported about 15 employees in some kind of machine shop. I never really got to know Don all that well and what he did. But he was one of the only nice ones who made me feel comfortable. They did throw great pig roasts once a year in the spring by the lake. He makes great beef jerky and smoked fish.

And her mother, a nurse too, who married her second husband Marty. A great guy too and I was very sad when he died right after my own father. I think it was the last event I attended and saw the dtep family now lost forever to me. Now that my stepmom remarried she has no use for her old family. One she knew for 20 years. And she had sat next to me, as my father lie in the hospital, already dead but we were hoping (with dead bowels??) and told me she would never marry again. As she had even said it to me, as my father lie there, I did not expect her to say that or want to hold her to that kind of promise. In your sixties to resign yourself to a life alone, especially the kind of social butterfly and family person she was, was insaine.

But how can you argue with a person losing her husband? She married a man a year and a half after my father died. I just wish she wouldnt have sat there and kept saying, abadment she would never marry again. I even wanted to tell her then, dont say that because you dont want to sit here making promises you really dont intend to keep. But she was always phoney like that.

When her father died though, she was left alot of money, as she was when her grandmother died. So much so she even gave me and my sister 500. We actually found out that her and her sister were millionaries. My father and her buiolt a new house. But my mom made it a point to show me, I think it was even in the paper somewhere, that the house was only in her name. My father had no rights to anything or anywhere they lived. Even if they were to get a divorce. And then she would get new, expensive SUVs every year. And all the while my dad had a car that, when he died, was worth 7000 blue book and had more than 90,000 miles on it. It was like an eyesore in their drive, with their expensive house, and all the expensive cars parked around but his. She even gave both her children loads of money all the time, bought them better cars then she had, and gave them so much more than her own husband....

When I was around the age of 18 the family decided to go on a cruise. I had never been on one, or even out of the country (but Canada, like that counts when you live close in Ohio), and really wanted to go. Being on a cruise ship, stopping in carribean islands, I havent even done it now in my fourties. Idk why but I knew it would pbly be my one chance in life. But when my dad contacted my mom and said she would have to put 500 a piece in for the both of us to go (me and my sister). Well my mom usually saved for vacations and we could go, with what she had saved for us, to Florida and Disney (for a second time and third overall) if we wanted. But she knew a cruise was something we had never been on. I thought it so ludacris my dad and stepmom, even if she had the money and not he, asking my mom to foot the bill for our vacation with them crazy so I just said I didnt want to go, fuck it. So DIsney again.

And unfortunately my stepdad went that time. (the craziness in my family gets nuts when you learn about my stepdad...and the fact he and my stepmom were married before when my parents were, they knew each other when I played softball from five up, so when they all got divorced they swaped and not for sex shit as most ppl think,...they did it to make everyones life involved miserable, as they did).

Yup.....my stepdad and mother were dating for a few years, after my parents divorce,

Samuel Lou's Dear Diary