The O/T – “Mission Accomplished”

Today is a momentous occasion…Today is a victory in my life…Today represents me standing alone at the top of the pinnacle…after a year long climb up some of the most treacherous and jagged terrain I’ve ever had the misfortune to come across.

This is not a story about Cancer…

For me, this is a Tale of Redemption…

It’s the story of how one can run, seemingly for a lifetime…only to find one day, that you were only “Running in Place”…and never really putting any distance between you and the problem itself. 

It’s the story of how one can stand up to Adversity…how one can battle seeming overpowering odds…how one can battle the Adopted Daughter, who had her hand in my dad’s till and was working to gain control of the estate with either POA or through Guardianship…

It’s the story of how one can overcome prejudice from his dad’s friends…and even an entire church congregation…based on the false witness that my dad told the people in his life….none of which were even true.

It’s the story of being a newbie to the world of lawyers, probate court, estate probate, estate liquidation, and other estate business…plus a litany of things I had to figure out, starting from saving the estate from being taken by the State of Texas itself.

Mostly, it’s a story of what should have been…and it’s a tale of the darkest side of our Human Nature, that I’ve ever bared witness too…it’s the dark side of our natures that I despise so deeply.

And I saw it all the way…up and down the entire line…and the view wasn’t very pretty. 

We’re getting close to the point now, where this will become a story of What Was…

And then, we can begin to write the new story for me of What Will Be?

When all of this got started at the beginning of last year, I wrote in a post, that I expected no Personal Growth for myself with this chapter of my life

 How could I?

Suddenly, I was confronted by all of my old house guests from my past…the folks I had been running away from for most of my 50 years…you’re familiar with them…they run in some of your families too…Anger, Bitterness, Resentment, and Betrayal.

In the end, I would find out that his life had been a LIE.  And many of his friends found out at the very end of it….some of it I shattered, because I was tired of enabling him…and other truths emerged as his folks saw the REAL person while they visited him in the hospital. 

I witnessed some of that…and he was the meanest thing to his friends who came up to see him….he was very mean and angry with me on too many nights.  

The more I dug through his life…the more upset I got.  He did not handle his life the way he perpetrated it to be.  He buffaloed me through fear and intimidation his whole life…since nobody could ever challenge…he held onto “The Illusion of Control.”

Only at the end, did I see none of that….only false pride and bluster…unable to ask me ever for any help…for reasons that are between him and the Lord….he told all of friends to NOT TELL ME for 3 DAYS what had happened - and where he was.  

I don’t know why.

All my life, even into late adulthood, he always told me, “You’re not worthy enough to carry the name of Harrison."

Now, when I look at it…I think it’s the other way around…he got it backwards:(

He used to inspire me and ‘grow me up’ with such phrases as:

1. “You’re a moody $hit – like your mother.”
2. “You’re not a Virgo.”
3. “You can’t pour pi$$ out of a boot.”

And the big one (that he used when he really wanted to insult you)…

“You need to change your name to X….” (insert mom’s maiden name for X).

What kind of bully beats up on his ‘planned’ son?

I guess that’s really what it was…just bullying…through fear and intimidation…through verbal and mental abuse…and if that didn’t work….we’d break out the razor strap and school me…and in later years, boots for kicking you up the stairs and hitting you like a grown man that you weren’t at 12-13 years of age.

I’ve not shed one tear…and after all of this…I doubt that I ever will…I don’t think I even can….that part of me died long ago… 

So, he’s gone…and all of his stuff is gone now too…I’ve dissolved him, piece by painstaking piece…we finally cleared the house….took us 7-months….

We threw out over 400 contractor sized bags of trash….we set out pile after pile of stuff by the curb for the pickers or the trash man…the pickers picked and picked some more….we had multiple picker and junk man teams circling the house like vultures…

They were passing out business cards…and running morning and evening shifts stopping by…rooting around and looking for treasure amongst the debris.