My mother died on October 27th two years ago. On the night of the 29th, we had the visitation at the funeral home. My wife, and younger two kids (ages 28 & 29) and I went to eat with friends after the visitation. When we got home,one of my brothers, and his kids and some of their friends were having a drunken party. I will talk about the living arrangements later in the narrative. My niece was drunk and God knows what else from a combination of Tequila and Xanax. a seventeen-year-old, his girlfriend (age  16) and  his friend  (age 17) were drunk too. There were probably 15 or so teens and adults outside and it would appear that all of them were well on the way to plastered. Me and mine were not in the mood to party and weren't. As far as that goes, I am not one to drink to that level at all.  My wife and our kids were in our bedroom with the door closed.

As we were coming in,  the 22-year old niece asked if she and her husband could sleep in one of the rooms. one of my sons answered it was OK if she slept in "MY ROOM" just remember no dogs on the carpet. We had been in our bedroom for a couple of minutes and someone kicked the door in. It was the niece's husband. He grabbed one of my sons by the neck and attempted to crush his larynx. He then proceeded to crush his eyeglasses as he continued his assault. I had been laying across the bed. I stood up and he  blacked my eye and split my brow open. All I had done was stand up. My other brother and some friends of his were in the living room and came and broke up the brouhaha. I did not see the end of it as the commotion had woke my dad up and I was trying to get him to back to bed. At some point after we were all separate, The nieces husband calmly told my wife that he would come in and slit our throats while we slept.

I get dad back to bed and am sitting in the living room , one of the friends was trying to stop my bleeding. The brother who was a parent to the niece bursts in the front door and is out of control. He comes running toward me still seated screaming (curses omitted) that this was not your  house as long as "MY DADDY IS STILL ALIVE!" He is standing in my face screaming as I am retreating. As I am backed up against the wall, my son tries to get him off of me. My brother starts the fisticuffs. Someone from the group outside tackled me into the kitchen. The tackle injured my knee. I will be undergoing surgery to correct it in the next few weeks. After my son was out of my brothers grasp, the brother was bellowing threats about us ganging up on my niece's husband.  I called 911 which incited him even more. He was between my group and the front door and  my niece's husband was guarding the back door. My niece had sent  my niece's husband to get (kill?) us because we suggested there were rules. When  my niece's husband could not complete it, she told her dad (my brother)that we had ganged up on  her husband and had taken over the house as our own. Someone finally corralled him and we were able to leave. We called the non-emergency TCSO # twice on the way to our other son's house in Mount Pleasant.  At some point the officer called and told us "THAT he wasn't coming to arrest us." We were attacked and held by a bunch of drug fueled thugs and WE WEREN'T going to jail! We moved out the next day after the funeral.

Now the background and history: My wife and I had moved in with my parents to help. Mom was bad off, perhaps dying. Dad was at best old. They needed help staying in their house.  My niece had moved out in about May. In June, I started to clean up and repair the house for us to move in. It looked like a house from the series HOARDERS. I spent thousands of dollars and over a month of full-time work getting it in order. Actually it was just half of the house. The half that My niece fouled.

My niece was FURIOUS with me over the repairs I did in "HER ROOM" (and to a lesser extent the whole house). You can ask anyone except her. From her room alone, 2+ dishwasher loads of dishes with caked, rotten, and mildewed food and beverage. Dog feces, putrid odor, TOXIC..... UNINHABITABLE. Trash and debris was 6 to 8" deep. The top drawer of the dresser had been converted to a gerbil habitat and never cleaned or even dumped. All of this in addition to THOUSANDS of spent cigarette butts in ashtrays, dishes, lying on the furniture,  and just in the floor.  The mattress had been turned over because it was soaked with blood. Looked like lambs had been slaughtered on it. The paint was scraped, missing, drywall was broken, and otherwise needed replacement. There were some childhood sayings and painted on  memorabilia on the walls, but the overall condition of the room prohibited saving them. The ceiling was a yellow brown color from too many cigarettes and ....  I bagged up five or six lawn and leaf bags of trash and bundled the rest of it in the carpet. The carpet was only five years old, but was soaked through with dog feces, dog urine, spilled food and beverage, and just general filth. I wasn't even able to save the carpet pad. The hall and living room were in similar condition. I did re-carpet all of the bedrooms on that side of the house, but the carpet in the others was about 20-years old.  It took a whole 5-gallon can of oil based primer to cover the royal blue walls and smoke inundated ceiling in that one approximately 12 x 12 room and a closet. i finished the walls with a pastel green, brilliant white ceiling paint, a deep green trim paint, and appropriate window coverings.

Timeline:

1991: Mom and dad build a new house after the old one burned.  Mom and Dad retire
1993: My Brother and his wife divorce My niece winds up in Mom & Dad's Custody.
1996: My wife gets sick. My wife and the kids move in in an emergency. I live in travel trailer. My brother stoned on meth hits my 12-year old and starts a fight with me. We call 911. My brother climbs a tree. He is not arrested or charged. My wife, three kids, and I live in a 8-28' Travel trailer for 7 months.
1996: My brother moves back in with girlfriend in tow. Both are methamphetamine addicts. It was rough.
2001: My brother moves out with girlfriend. They break up after a few months out of Mom and Dad's house.
2001-2004 : My brother back in with a revolving door of drug addict girlfriends.(My brother's room still was not half as bad as My niece's.)
2005: Dad buys My niece a new car
2006: My niece changes high schools because she is "embarrassed" by her dad's legacy. (not the "official" reason, I wonder now if it were even the REAL reason.)
2007:My niece goes to school at A&M Galveston. Car is so ragged out that she is not able to drive it home. Mechanically the car was sound, but the body and glass was beat to death. It was absolute abuse. At least once, I can verify that she did doughnuts in a cornfield. A boy she dated implied that this was normal for her. Car and Laptop were confiscated in a drug bust. She was initially charged with Manufacture with intent to distribute a controlled substance. She is adamant that she had a plea deal to lower that to a simple possession charge, but last I heard the computer still shows the felony. The car was released seemingly because it had insignificant worth and it was not My niece's in title. I don't know the rest of the story, but it was never driven after it got home and Mother WOULD NOT file an insurance claim. It was clearly totaled. Eventually it was repossessed.
2008: My niece met   her husband and moved him in Mother and dad's house. At first she worked like a trooper. He never really ever worked. She went through jobs and had attendance issues and eventually could not find a job in or around Titus County. Somewhere in this general time frame, Mom and Dad's money problems collapsed on them. It appears they had been financing My niece's lifestyle and perhaps My brother's legal problems with credit cards for years. My more responsible brother and I began what wound up being ongoing support for the rest of Mom's life. He may have been ponying up for a longer time. My niece and her husband were back and forth between my parents' house and her mother's near Lufkin. They got married sometime about 2009
2010: Mom's medical problems begin in the fall. My niece and her husband  are back and forth between Lufkin and my parents' house. During 2009 or 2010, my niece's husband had a disagreement with a guy and this guy supposedly pistol whipped him.  The one thing I know is that this guy treated my dad well, helped him with things that went far beyond the shares he owed for dad allowing him to cultivate watermelons on dad's place. My guess is that this guy accused My niece and her husband of being leeches taking advantage of my parents. Then it was on.
2011: Mom's medical problems escalate. Money outlay for my brother and I increase. We are paying for prescriptions , but honestly, it is not a significant part of their shortfall. They have Cadillac prescription drug insurance and excellent co-insurance for the medical care.  The reality is we were giving them money every month that far outstripped the total of their drug bills.
May 2011: My niece and her husband move back to Lufkin even though her mom has relocated to near Daingerfield. My niece's husband had a job and they are planning on staying. My wife and I had been looking for  a place to move into in  Titus County, but really weren't having luck. My wife took a job at Titus Regional. I wasn't working. After clear assurances that they WERE NOT coming back, I started the quest to move us in out there.
July 2011: We moved in. Not long after that, My niece calls in the late evening because her husband had been arrested in or around Angelina County.  It appears that her husband had broke the other guy's arm and perhaps more. They finally let her husband out with no charges because the other guy feared pressing charges because he was afraid of being charged himself. Evidently this was one of their housemates. My niece came home and we relented and let her stay for a couple of days until they could find a new place down there. There were three new rules. Mom and dad supported us in them. No dogs on the carpet, No smoking in the house, and NO food in the bedrooms.  She was so upset by the no dogs in the bedroom that she convinced mom and dad to let her bring the dog into their bedroom (which had generally been a no-no since the beginning) and she could sleep on the floor.  She would smoke in the bathroom and think she got away with it.



My niece railed about the room. She hated that we had not left it as it was.  She was argumentative about it. She was loud and obnoxious about it. She made veiled threats toward my Mother-in-law who now occupied the room. her husband stayed in Lufkin and actually continued to live with the people as before including the guy whose arm he broke. It appears that even after the fight that My niece was the one who was not welcome. If you crossed My niece and her husband was around, she would snap her fingers point and say his name sharply and he was to jump to. She never ever turned a light off. One evening mom was in the hospital in Tyler. My mother in law was in the Hospital in Mount Pleasant. Every light and all four televisions were on and NO ONE was home. One day I was there working on the computer. Twice she came out of the pantry room and left the light on. Twice I asked her politely to turn the light off as she closed the door. The third time, I wasn't so polite. She demanded of me to say please. I said no, I had asked politely enough (twice in less than an hour.) She sicked her husband on me. her husband came and demanded I be respectful to "HIS WIFE" I explained calmly why I had said what I said. He agreed that the lights never got turned off. Man she was miffed that he didn't kick my butt as she had demanded.  This appears to be a recurring theme with her. She gets mad and had her husband do her dirty work.

October 27, 2011: Mother dies. My niece screams (an understatement) at all of us for watching the World Series. She is beside herself. Then when one of her friends calls and says she has had a baby she is giddy. What was good for the Ganders certainly was not applicable to the Goose.
October 28, 2011: My niece is on me all day. I wind up in the ER with my BP about thirty points above its normally high level.
October 29, 2011: Visitation and the war.
October 30, 2011 My wife kids and I sit on the third row at the funeral. We load our stuff into a U-haul.
October 31, 2011: we try to make sense of it. Everyone except My niece agrees we need to try to stay there with dad.  My niece looses her cool and calls My wife "That Bitch" simply because she asks her hard questions. It is obvious that we cannot stay. Even if My wife and I could, Her mom was too fragile for us to take the chance that My niece might follow through on the veiled threats while we were not there.

WE WERE TERRIFIED. I slept at Dad's for most of the week with a shotgun beside my bed and the bedroom door and the window booby trapped. He had just lost my mom. Regardless of what I felt he didn't deserve for me to desert him. My wife stayed in town with our adult son. The next week was a travesty. My wife couldn't work. She quit to keep from getting fired. So it cost us our home. It cost us her job. We had to cash in on her 401(k)to afford to move. After that first week, I came over only after I called and assured there was no conflict. I really didn't come around much. I came over the first of December and paid his bills. I was surprised how much money was left after we had them paid. By the tenth, he had given every penny except the amount I had told him was going to be recovered by OPM for Mom's check after she died to either My brother or My niece. Giving is a relative term. My niece took the card and spent like it was her own money.  A few days later she told her dad that I had failed to pay two bills. One was paid in full on a bill that was available online the day I paid them. The other one was not available yet and there was no money when it came out mid-month. (I had paid it out of my funds the previous month [IN NOVEMBER WHEN WE WERE IN THE MIDDLE OF MOVING].)

The first of January came. My niece had already spent a couple hundred dollars on Saturday before dad even knew that he had money. I went out to dads on New Year's afternoon to do the bills. My wife left me there on foot and left to run an errand for our son (who lived in Greenville). I was in the process of paying the bills when My niece and her friend came in. I asked My niece about one of the bills she had set up to pay herself (are you sure you have the money? I can pay it with dad's money) She became belligerent. She informed me she was leaving. Still seated, I said" One more thing... Don't tell someone I am not paying dad's bills right when I am." She got really belligerent. I admit. I did not take it well. She screamed at me that I was not going to tell her what she could and couldn't say in HER HOUSE (Emphasis HERS). I let loose. I said things about her that I had held my tongue previously about her personal life that I am not going to get into here. Suffice to say, she has baggage. If need be, I will enumerate it at a later time. She put her hand in my mouth to shut me up. I slapped at her and hit at worst a glancing blow. She said AND I QUOTE  "YOU ARE GOING TO JAIL... MOTHERFUCKER!" I shoved her back out of my face. Yeah, I shoved her hard. I am going to jail for slapping at her and she can create me all the problems she has in the past six months and I cannot even get the sheriff's office to give the time of day when they beat us up, threaten us, and run us out of the county. Run me away from taking care of my dad...... Something is wrong with this picture.

She has taken all my parents have to offer. She rewarded herself by spending $75.00 on January 2nd at a tattoo shop in Pittsburg on Dad's card. She said it was a Bra. So either she got a piercing, a small tattoo, or a sexy lingerie item when she was so grievously injured the day before. That whole injury was drama. She got in her car drove away and came back ten minutes or so later and called the sheriffs office from the front yard.  The whole idea of the ER visit may have been to get more Vicodin. Since mom was dead, the supply in the house was much tighter. The hospice complained that the Hydrocodone was going way too fast. I really don't think mom was taking anything near that much. Several times they had me search for bottles of it they could not find and they would mysteriously find it after My wife and i were in the other room discussing that My niece must have taken it.  It never seemed like they actually found it, just more aptly tried to hide the fact it was gone.

I should have just let her have her way and walked away. It would be about the same as it is now. I haven't seen my dad since that day. I have called him once. It is just way too stressful. My brother  is doing dad's bills. I actually enjoyed doing it. Trying to give back part of what he and mom did for us when My wife was her sickest. For him, it is a responsibility he will take because he has to. Not saying he begrudges it, but he doesn't enjoy getting to do it like I did. I am in counseling. The anger book says I am a 2 out of 5 on the anger scale. I may have anger issues on occasion. I wonder if anyone is a 1?

My niece's behavior is clearly elder abuse. While dad will be adamant that he "gave My niece the money" he as a rule never had a clue how much she spent or what she spent it on. I will agree that dad has never been hungry or had the lights cut off. He has had my brother or I pick up the slack after she uses up all he has on hand. He tells me it is better since January. Perhaps because she actually doesn't believe she has her bluff in on her uncle. I have rambled on. The bottom line is that I need this to go away. I have done everything I promised The judge Judge  (I have not returned to Titus county, I drove through to get to Greenville once.)

The day I was arrested, my argument was the inequality of what happened to us and there was absolutely NOTHING done. In fact it was implied that it was our fault and we were lucky that we weren't going to jail. The only thing we were guilty of was telling a bunch of drug fueled drunks that there were rules and using a characterization of which room was which that they didn't like. We did defend ourselves when attacked. SO the TCSO never heard this story. We were not invited to share it. Fact of business it felt like "let it lie or you WILL go to jail". It was bad enough before my wife had a roll-over wreck. After that, I was beside myself.

I know this all sounds like a lot of excuses. To some extent it is. On the other hand, if you want to explore it ask her mother  my other brother, perhaps even her own dad . The others at our house the night before the funeral. Ask the neighbors about the scorched earth My niece and her husband created. I was wrong to shove her, but I was not wrong to defend my dad from her abuse, exploitation, and neglect. Yeah, it made me angry when she said she could continue just as if nothing had happened and it made me even angrier when she was gonna send me to jail and I seemingly couldn't even get the time of day from the TCSO.