Remnants of a Life

We went to see Byrnes Hollow several times when I was a kid. My dad told us stories of growing up there, pointing out all the different places where some of those events happened. Some of those stories were the last memories that my dad would hold on to, the last remnants of his life that his mind would lose. Towards the end of his life, just to engage him, I tried to get him to talk about some of the things he had related to us years ago, but it was difficult. He had memories of them, I knew, because I could mention them and he would begin to talk about them, sometimes coherently, many times not.  I think that after a certain point his mind just became a patchwork of memories, and too many frames of references had deteriorated away keeping him from making sense of any of his remaining memories.

Of all the things my dad related to me regarding those memories, two things stand out to me. The first was the poverty of his childhood. He never let us forget how hard life had been for him and his family growing up during The Great Depression. The other was his admiration for his mother. He loved his mother, he respected her, and he admired her; I never once heard him say a derogatory remark about her.

Excerpt from A Life Well Stolen

Chapter One, continued

When we were kids, he took us to see that childhood home, though by that time the building was long gone and so were all the rest of his relative’s houses. Besides a few bushes that might have once been part of a yard, a few planks and a lone chimney at the top of the hill were the only evidence that any homes had ever been there.

“Was this your house?” we asked him, referring to those few lonely remains.

“No, that was my uncle’s house,” he said. “He was an ill-tempered fellow, and he was fond of the bottle, so we stayed away from him most of the time.”

“What was like it like growing up here?” I asked him.

They were very poor, he said. They had no running water and no electricity. They lived off of the land, trapping or hunting for their food and canning their own home grown vegetables.

Surviving was hard work during The Great Depression. There were no jobs, so they did what they had to do.  It was a strenuous life and it wore people out. Like his father, who, according to my dad, just gave up and left one day, leaving my grandmother to raise their family on her own. My dad said he didn’t know how his mother had managed, but somehow she had.

He spoke often of his admiration for his mother. She was a hard working woman who raised five boys and one girl on her own during the worst economic times this country has ever seen. She was tough as nails, very stern, intolerant of misbehavior and quick to unleash punishment for any wrongdoing.  It was her way or the highway, she often said, a philosophy my dad adopted for himself later on in life. Her character left an indelible impression on my dad. His father also left an impression, just not a positive one.  Both parents shaped his personality as he adopted the characteristics that gave his mother her fortitude, and adapted against the traits that he believed lent to his father’s failures.

The Big Man from the Holler

I don’t know what age I was when I discovered that my dad was the big man around the county. I think I was around six or seven when he was promoted to management, and it was a few years later that he was promoted to senior manager of his division. He had hundreds of people, who made very good money, working for him, and hundreds more waiting in line for the opportunity to be one of his employees. Needless to say, people showed him a tremendous amount of respect.

At least to his face, but I’ll get into that later.

In this section of the book, I write about my dad’s manner of speech. I have to confess, and some may disagree, but I think that by the time I came around, he’d lost most of his North Carolina accent.  To my ear, there were only a few words that gave away his origins.  My mom was a different story; she never did lose her accent, and there was no mistaking it. I’m certain her choice of words and her pronunciation remained the same her entire life. To her, we were the ones that talked funny.

One of my favorite words that they used frequently was Hollow. But that’s not how they pronounced it.

Excerpt from A Life Well Stolen

Chapter One, continued

I knew from any early age that my dad was different from my friends’ dads, and it wasn’t that he had more money than them. It was the way people around there treated him.  They spoke to him with a level of respect that others didn’t seem to receive. I heard the word “sir” frequently, and when they addressed him it was rarely by his first name. It was always Mr. Byrnes. It made me proud to walk alongside him and be introduced as his son.  I didn’t know then that a big reason why he received that treatment was because he was one of the top managers at the largest and highest paying employer in the county, and many of those contacts I witnessed were from his employees or people who wanted to be his employees.

But that wasn’t the only way my dad was different. He also seemed to talk unlike any of my friends’ dads. For example, he did a lot of reckoning and fixing, such as “I reckon I’ll fix the fence today,” or “I'm fixing to go to the store.” None of my friends’ dads talked that way, nor did they say “out yonder” like my dad did when he really meant “over there.” They also didn’t call animals, ding-a-lings, like my dad did frequently. And when my friends’ dads got upset, they cussed and swore like any hell bound normal person around there would do. My dad yelled things like, “Ah, Foot!” or “Dad-Jim-it!

He was different, and I figured out after a while that it had a lot to do with where he was from.  He’d grown up in the hills of North Carolina, in a place he affectionately called Byrnes Hollow. But that’s not how he said it. When he pronounced “Hollow” it came out as “Holler.”

            “Why did they call it that?” I asked him, finding the name curious. “Why ‘Holler’?”

When he explained it to me, I noticed how his face brightened and how the corners of his mouth pulled up, as if the telling of it amused him despite his attempt to hide it. “All of the Byrnes families lived on the same hill,” he said. “There were no phones back then, so if you needed to talk to one of us, you just went out to the yard and hollered.  Everyone who lived in those parts could hear the Byrnes hollering for each other so often that it eventually just came to be known as Byrnes Holler.”

That was how my dad told it. Of course, I’ve since learned that they actually lived in a hollow, not a “holler”, as many people from that area of the country pronounce the word. Funny thing is, my dad never admitted to the joke.

Rich or Poor?

How do I begin this?

As I wrote this book, that’s the question I kept coming back to time and time again, and draft after draft. I couldn’t decide. I wanted to introduce my dad and show you who he was and where he came from. I wanted you to know the person that he was before Alzheimer’s stole it all away. So I wrote pages and pages of where my dad grew up, bits of our family history in that area. I went into detail about his early childhood, meeting my mom, and their early marriage. But in the end, though I was very attached to that part of the book, I decided it had little to do with the story I was telling. I removed around 80 or 90 pages, and rewrote the entire first few chapters, condensing everything down. You need to understand who my dad was and where he came from, but I want to get you to the meat of the story. Hopefully, I accomplished that.

So where to begin? 

Since my story has much to do with my dad’s wealth, I decided to start with the question I often asked myself as a child.

Are we rich or poor?

Excerpt of A Life Well Stolen

Chapter One beginning…

By the time my dad’s life was stolen he had become a multi-millionaire.  His net worth at that time would have been considered a fortune to some and pocket change to others. Many people that knew Russell Byrnes said he was rich, but whether or not he was is debatable and subjective. From my point of view, for the lifestyle that he led, I would say he was well off.

When I was a kid my dad had yet to become a millionaire but he did have quite a bit more wealth than the majority of the people where we lived. I say that now, but I didn’t know that then. I don’t remember being better off than most. In fact, I thought we were poor. We lived in an old log cabin and I remember many times eating pinto beans and cornbread or creamed corn and biscuits for weeks at a time because my dad said we didn't have enough money for food. I remember my younger sisters having to wear hand-me-downs from our older sisters and me getting clothes only once a year, at the start of the school year and only because my old clothes no longer fit.  I remember making my own toys because we rarely received them. When I looked around at my friends, it seemed so many of them had so much. They had new clothes or new toys frequently. They seemed to have all the latest electronics, video games, and sports equipment.  So when people said we were rich, I had to scratch my head because but I sure didn’t see it.

But my dad did. He saw it because he was driving the cash buggy and he held the reins to his finances in a death grip. My mom, Catherine Byrnes, tried to get him to let her drive every once in a while, but my dad wouldn’t allow it.  She could suggest which direction they went, but he would do the driving. She was just there for the ride, as we all were.

I also know now that a significant portion of his income was going toward savings and investments. You had to put away every penny you could, he told us, because you never knew what tomorrow would bring. He knew that first hand because he'd grown up during The Great Depression.  His family suffered so much more than we did the few measly times we had to eat pinto beans or creamed corn, or the times we didn't get new clothes or new toys.  Not often, but occasionally he went without meals because there just was no food. He frequently went without shoes and very rarely received any new clothing. Compared to how he grew up, for us hand-me-downs and the occasional poor man’s meal were small sacrifices for the security he wanted to provide for our family. 

Protecting a Legacy

At the end of our fight, we realized what a battle it had been and how unfair it was that our dad lost everything. We were amazed at how easy it had been for the person to betray him and steal away everything, and we were shocked at how little protection the law provided Alzheimer’s victims.We knew we weren’t alone. We knew from talking to others in similar situations that there were many others who had become victimized in a similar manner. We also knew from reading the news that there were many victims out there. But we also figured out that there are things that can be done to avoid what happened to our dad. We wanted to tell our story, to share what we learned. That’s why I wrote this book.

Excerpt from A Life Well Stolen

End of Preface

That’s what happened to my dad, even though he had prepared himself for just that scenario and believed that his life savings was protected. He believed his estate plan was foolproof and iron tight, but he was wrong.  Many people think the same as him. They work their whole lives and make plans to protect their life savings in exactly the same manner as my dad did. They assume they are protected, but they are not, any more than he was.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. I know that because we figured that out through all of this. My dad lost everything, but his loss can serve to teach others and help them avoid the same fate that he suffered. That is why I felt compelled to tell his story. I want to show how it all happened and what drove the person who betrayed his trust to commit such an atrocious deed. I want others to know the awful treachery that transpired at nearly the end of my dad’s life so that they can defend themselves and their loved ones against those that seek to gain from taking advantage of another’s vulnerabilities.

My dad's life was well stolen, by illness and betrayal, but nobody else’s life has to be. There was a way my dad could have safeguarded himself and his legacy. There is a way that others suffering from Alzheimer’s or any form of dementia can preserve their own legacy, whether it is millions of dollars, thousands, or only a few sentimental belongings. Whatever it may be, there is a way to protect it, and it’s really very simple. 

The Law is Behind the Times

Sometimes we live in a fantasy world by thinking that just because something is immoral that automatically makes it illegal.  That was the case with us. Someone had stolen everything from our dad. This had been done at a time when he suffered from advanced Alzheimer’s. His will, his living trust, and his IRA beneficiaries had been changed at a time when he couldn’t always remember who his beneficiaries were. He had trouble finding a fork in his own kitchen, but yet drastic changes were made to his estate planning, giving one person control of every dime he owned.  That’s just wrong. What person can say that it’s not?  It had to be illegal. That’s what we thought, at least.

But we were wrong.

Everything was taken from my dad at a time when he couldn’t comprehend what was happening, but the manner in which it was done was all technically legal.

Excerpt from A Life Well Stolen

Preface Continued

Soon after that day, I came up with my share of the money our lawyers had asked for and my sisters put in their part. Our battle continued, and two months later we reached a settlement with the person who had robbed our dad.  It was a small victory, really, but we had at least recouped part of what was taken from him.

Nevertheless, the victory tasted bitter to me.  Justice had been to me what it was all about and that hadn’t been served. I knew that this was surely happening to many others, caused by a shortcoming in our legal system, and since my dad hadn’t received justice, I knew others wouldn’t either. We had won something for our dad but, by settling, we hadn't changed anything and the very thing that had happened to our dad and our family would happen to others.

All because of something one of our lawyers had said to us right before we agreed to settle.

“The law is behind the times,” she’d said, and it was true.

 Alzheimer’s was relatively unknown a few years ago, yet we’ve learned a great deal about the disease in a short amount of time and the legal system hasn’t kept pace. Those suffering from this disease are left unprotected and easy targets because the law allows for moments of competency in legal matters such as changing a will or beneficiary designations. These moments can be as short as a few minutes as long as there is a witness to verify an aptitude that any Alzheimer’s expert will tell you does not exist in advanced levels of the disease.  And, the burden of proof lies not with that witness to prove this moment of competency but with those that have been affected to prove otherwise; and in doing so they must embark on a possibly futile effort to prove that the witness was either mistaken or dishonest. Since the law offers little to no protection, this problem will likely continue unabated, and I think that is a great injustice to all of those who are victims of this disease or will become so.

Feeling Powerless

It had been dark when I woke, and I sat up in bed for a long time just thinking about everything; I couldn’t keep the dark thoughts at bay. My wife was sound asleep the entire time. She didn’t know that I was awake or how I felt just then, and she wouldn't know until she’d read the section below. I envied the peace she felt, and I dreaded having to soon tell her just how dour our situation was.  I think it took me a couple of hours before I could sleep again and by that time it was already starting to get light outside.

Over the five years of our fight for our dad, this was the lowest point for me. I would start to come out of it this very day as I spent the holiday with my wife and kids and realized that family was all I needed to be happy in this life.

Excerpt from A Life Well Stolen

Preface Continued

I looked over at my wife.  She was sleeping peacefully, unaware of the inner turmoil I was experiencing at that moment. I had asked so much of her and she had agreed without hesitation.  He’s your dad, she had said.  You have to do what is right.  I’ll support you no matter what. And she had, without ever complaining. Not even once. But I realized then that it had been too much to ask of her, and too much to ask her to risk. There was so much she had wanted for us, for our children.  All those hopes and dreams for our future were uncertain now, I thought to myself, and probably would have to be forgotten. It wasn’t fair to them, I knew then, and that realization gave me such an overwhelming sense of guilt I wanted to run away and hide from it all.

What had I done?

What had we all done?

I wondered if my sisters felt the same.  Their spouses had agreed to fight this as well and in turn jeopardized the welfare of their families. Did my sisters ever feel any remorse for the risks they placed their own families in? Did they ever regret starting this losing battle we were in, having spent so much money only to have failed?

I lay back down, tried to sleep but couldn’t. I tossed and turned, trying unsuccessfully to dispel my feelings of remorse for what I had caused my family to go through and trying to control my anger at what had been done to my dad.

After a long while, I’m not sure how long, I somehow eventually fell back asleep, saddened by the loss of my dad and completely resigned to an overwhelming feeling of powerlessness to do anything about what had happened to him. If I had been in the courtroom, I would have told our attorneys to pack it up.  I would have given up the fight. I would have been done with it all.

            But I wasn’t in the courtroom.

            Instead, I was at home and in bed where I slept for another couple of hours.  When I awoke, I put my worries away and helped my wife prepare our Thanksgiving dinner. At the table, we each said what we were thankful for and everyone mentioned the family among other things. I carved the turkey as memories of watching my dad carving turkeys with an old 1970’s electric knife wandered through my mind. Then we ate and the food was delicious, all of it. Afterwards, as I played with my kids and enjoyed my time with my family, I realized that having my loved ones with me was all that really mattered in life and was everything I would ever need.

The Price for Justice

I remember this day so well. It was Thanksgiving morning and I should have been looking forward to the day, but I wasn’t. I couldn’t think of anything other than how bleak our future seemed. I was mad at the injustice of my dad’s situation and frustrated at our inability to do anything about it, and I was missing Dad.  But beyond that, I was tormented with feelings of remorse, rocked with guilt that was palpable. You see, my thirst for vengeance was causing undue hardship to my own family. I started thinking that our fight wasn’t worth it, because the wrong people were getting hurt. Sometimes the price you pay for justice is just too high. Sometimes the guilty go free so that the innocent don’t suffer unnecessarily.

Excerpt from A Life Well Stolen

Preface Continued

As I sat in bed in the early hours of that morning, my wife asleep beside me, my kids in their beds, and it still dark outside, I worried about their well-being.  Having spent so much on legal fees, we had found ourselves on the brink of bankruptcy. What of their futures?  My daughter was only nine years old, my son seven. What had they done to deserve this? They had nothing to do with all of this treachery, yet they would suffer just the same. Their grandfather had wanted them to benefit from his hard work, yet instead they were going without and suffering as I used our money to pay for the services of the attorneys we had hired to reclaim that which had been taken from him.

And it was only going to get worse.  Our lawyers had just informed us that they needed more money to keep this going, and my share was going to be over $10,000.00.  And then if we lost the fight, we would soon have to pay so much more.

And we were losing, I thought to myself then. Not only had my dad lost his estate, but we were going to lose the battle to get it back and in the process we might also lose everything that we had as well.

That person had laughed about it and bragged, “They don’t have enough money to fight me.  They can’t do it. They’ll give up.”

The money part was close to right, but that didn’t make us give up. Instead, we had found the resources and fought on, spending tens of thousands of dollars on legal fees in the process. Our lawyers had recently told us we could potentially spend over a hundred thousand dollars more. Did we want to continue? Could we afford to continue? I had brashly said that I didn’t care what it cost.  We had been told that we could easily spend more than what our dad had intended to be our inheritance, but I still didn’t care. It wasn’t about the money, I had said to anyone that would listen.  That was the truth. It never had been about the money.  It had always been about justice for my dad and what was right. And it wasn’t right that a man with advanced Alzheimer’s could become victimized, as was my dad, and lose everything.

It just wasn’t right.

But what is right and wrong too often doesn’t factor in to real life.  I knew that then and I know that now. That morning, I couldn’t keep away the sense of foreboding that we were probably not going to win, and that I had spent all that money and would spend more for nothing. We were broke and it was my fault, I told myself.  I should not have risked my family’s future for my dad’s sake or for my desire for justice that at that moment seemed unattainable. What did justice mean to my family when they had no roof over their heads or food on the table?

It meant nothing.

Book Description

I just finished writing a new book description that should be showing up soon on Amazon.com, so I thought I would post it here.

Book Description:

This is the true story of my dad, a man whose life was stolen away by Alzheimer’s and betrayal.

Before he became sick, Russell Byrnes was intelligent and self-assured, a man of formidable presence who commanded respect. Born out of The Great Depression, he worked his way out of the poverty of his youth and accumulated a considerable estate. He was proud that he was able to provide for his family throughout his life, and secure in the knowledge that he would live comfortably in retirement and still be able to pass on a generous legacy to his heirs after his death. 

But then he developed Alzheimer’s, and the disease left him a feeble man. The illness took away his memories and his mind’s ability to function effectively, and it left him vulnerable. In his weakness, someone he trusted, someone close to him, stepped in and took advantage of him, robbing him of everything he owned.   I knew my dad well, and I know he never imagined that he would lose everything he had worked so hard for throughout his life. He believed he had safeguarded his lifesavings and protected himself, but he was wrong. No matter that he had taken all the right precautions, his sickness left him defenseless. Reduced by his condition, he was effortlessly manipulated, making the thievery all too easy. 

This is also the story of us, his family, and our fight to reclaim that which had been taken from him. Our struggle for justice lasted five years and cost us hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees, but in the end we had to walk away with no more than pieces of his life. Worse, day by day, month by month, while all this legal battling was going on, we slowly lost the man we were fighting for, as Alzheimer’s stole away his mind and eventually his body.  

Over the years we discovered many things about ourselves and others. We observed that some people were not who they claimed to be, and others not all they should be.   We learned that a man of God was not as saintly as he professed. Most of us realized how strong our family’s ties ran, while one of us chose to break those bonds and give in to bitterness. But the most important lesson we learned was how others who suffer from Alzheimer’s or any form of dementia can avoid a similar fate and protect their estates for themselves and their loved ones. Much is at stake. It could be a million dollars, a hundred million dollars, or it could be nothing more than an old guitar. It doesn’t matter.  People like my dad are far too easily victimized; whatever their legacy, it is far too valuable to allow it to be whisked away unjustly. My dad’s life was well stolen, but nobody else’s has to be.

A Torn Legacy & Misplaced Trust

The notion of trust wandered through my mind a lot as I was writing this story. My dad trusted the person who betrayed him, but as it turned out, there was very little that was trustworthy about that person.  I admit that I’m too trusting. My dad was nothing like me in that regard; he was very cautious trusting others.  But, as far as the person who betrayed him was concerned, Alzheimer’s took care of that little problem, and subsequently my dad’s legacy was torn to shreds.

Excerpt from A Life Well Stolen

Preface continued

Nothing could have been done to stop his sickness, but my siblings and I did not sit idly by while everything was being stolen from him.  When we discovered the appalling truth of what had happened, we acted instinctively to aid our dad.  He could no longer remember who we were, but we remembered who he was and what he had been to us and we would not allow him to become victimized without a fight. We owed him that, but that wasn’t why we went to battle for him. He was our dad, but he was no longer the man who had raised us. His mind ravaged by Alzheimer’s, he could no longer defend himself. We were all that he had.

So we hired lawyers and spent our money.  We let ourselves be deposed.  We went to court.  We listened and we cringed when the other side called us greedy children and accused us of not loving our dad, accused us of initiating a frivolous lawsuit because we were only interested in his money, as if we were the ones who had stolen it. Don't worry what they say, we had to tell ourselves. We're protecting our father. It's what anyone would do. So we ignored it all as best we could and fought on even as the other side made us out to be the criminals and praised the person who had actually taken advantage of our dad, a man with advanced Alzheimer's who was not even able to understand what was happening to him.

We fought for our dad to the best of our ability, for months, for years, but in the end it wasn't enough. We could not completely reclaim that which had been taken from him. We just had no idea how bloody a battle it would be.  A predator had sunk its teeth into our dad’s life and it was unwilling to let go. It was a tug of war to the bitter end. We were unwilling to allow it to take our dad, it would not release its hold, and in the end all that was left were pieces of our dad’s life.

Those pieces were better than nothing and we all knew that. But they came at great cost, both emotionally and financially, and it was not how my dad had intended his legacy, to be torn apart and ripped to shreds.

And it was all because of misplaced trust.

Unlike my dad, as my wife would tell you, I'm too trusting. I'm not saying I'm naïve.  I know there are people out there biding their time, watching and waiting for a sign of weakness so that they can attack.  I know also that there are opportunists who may not always be on the prowl or even consider the possibility until one presents itself to them.  I am not naïve, but neither is it easy for me to accept malefactors within my own circle of friends and family. If that is a weakness, then I am guilty; I have always been too trusting in others. 

My dad did not have that same failing; he was always skeptical about the motives of others.  That strength served him well his entire life, but in the end it was not sufficient to protect him. He was always vigilant of those outside, and careful of those around him, but still he didn't give sufficient credibility to the possibility that he would be betrayed. I guess it is just too difficult a thing to dissuade yourself from believing in those who are your supposed allies, the ones you should be able to rely on not defend against.

Alzheimer’s stole my dad’s memories and his cognitive abilities and in the end it was what killed him.  That I can accept, however reluctantly. But someone he trusted robbed him of everything he had worked for and on one day selfishly betrayed him and completely negated everything he had accomplished in his long life. That is what I can't accept. That is what makes me the angriest, that boils my blood and makes me want to lash out at someone or something.  I feel that same anger at times when I see one of my children being mistreated by another.  Yet with my children I am able to intercede and guard them from harm. With my dad, however, I could not intervene, and I realize now that even if I had known what was transpiring at the time it was happening, there still would have been nothing I could have done to stop it.  And that, after my anger has run its course, leaves me feeling discouraged, frustrated, and completely powerless.

Waking Up on Thanksgiving Day 2009

We battled in court for five years to reclaim our dad's stolen life. From the moment we discovered the treachery that had transpired I wanted to tell the world. But I couldn't; none of us could. Our lawyers kept us quiet. When this whole awful mess finally reached its conclusion, I couldn't wait to sit down in front of the computer and begin. There were other people suffering, others that would become victimized. Our story needed to be told! 

But when I finally opened up the word processor, I had no idea where to start. Should I talk about how an apparent man of God might not be what he claims to be? Should I share the bitterness that developed between family members? Should I relate how two of us turned on each other and how that ultimately played into my dad’s betrayal?  How much of the court battle should I tell? I had no idea, and like so many who have taken this task to hand, I had to delete many of my first attempts. There was so much to tell, but I couldn't figure out how to bring it all together.

As I thought it through, in my mind I kept going back to the previous Thanksgiving. That had been for me the lowest point in this whole struggle, when I felt certain that everything that we'd been through, everything we had done, and the thousands upon thousands of dollars we had spent up to that point was for nothing. Everything about our dad's life had been taken from him, and there was nothing we could do about it.

     

Excerpt from A Life Well Stolen

Preface

I woke up in the early morning hours thinking about my dad and how unjust it was that his life had been stolen from him. I lay there as sleep eluded me, pondering how it had all been so greedily yet effortlessly taken away from him by illness, by betrayal, and I thought, Why do I feel so resigned to helplessness?   Why can't we fix this?

I sat up in bed, considered getting up but didn’t.

It was Thanksgiving, 2009.

This would be the second Thanksgiving my dad would miss, though it seemed like the first.  He had passed away barely a year before, from Alzheimer’s disease, at the age of 81.  It took the disease thirteen years to run its course, and it was an agonizingly slow and cruel process. First, it took away his mind’s ability to form memories.  Next, it robbed him of the memories he already had. Then it removed his capacity to function coherently. And finally, it killed him.

That was one of the ways his life was stolen.

But it wasn't the only way.

Over the course of his illness, I saw firsthand how the disease affects a person’s mind and body, but I also discovered how it affects the people around them. For some, there is heartache, depression, sadness.  For others, there is denial and a need to escape the awful reality of this disease.  And for a very few, unfortunately, there is opportunity, the chance to prey upon the vulnerabilities of the victim, like the carnivore that senses the weakness of its potential prey.

As the disease progressed it left my dad vulnerable, and in his weakness someone stepped in and took advantage of him and robbed him of everything that he had worked for in his life—his entire life savings. It was as if the illness pushed him down and left him unable to move.  Then, seeing him there, helpless, someone who should have come to offer a hand to lift him back up, instead reached into his pocket and took his wallet and everything else he had of value.

At the time that this happened, my dad could not always remember his children’s names, his marriage to his wife, or whether his own siblings were alive.  He couldn't remember all the decades of hard work, the sacrifices he'd made, or the careful planning that he'd done over the years. And he couldn’t remember that he’d already chosen heirs and beneficiaries for his multimillion dollar estate.

He couldn’t remember any of that, but someone else could.

It happened on one day, July 3^rd, 2002, a few years after he developed the disease. On that day, he was driven to a lawyer’s office where a new will and a new power of attorney had been drawn up, awaiting his signature.  Then he was driven to his financial manager’s office, where he signed a change of beneficiary form for an IRA that was valued at nearly a million dollars. All of this didn't take long because the arrangements and the paperwork had been prepared in advance by someone else. In perhaps less than an hour, my dad signed over total control of his estate to one person. 

Lacking the ability to form memories, my dad didn’t know that at his death one person would now receive 90% of his estate and would be given control to decide what to do with the remaining 10%.  But the person who stole it from him knew and would later attempt to hide that information from us, his children, and to deceive us into thinking our dad had no money left, when he in fact had everything we thought he had, and more.

We should not have doubted that, but we did, if only a little. Like so many others, we were fooled at first. We shouldn’t have been. Our dad had planned for his future in such a way that no one, least of all his own family, should have been fooled into thinking he’d somehow lost it all.

My dad was born during The Great Depression, and his parents had been dirt poor. He had clawed his way out of that existence, and throughout his life made so many sacrifices to ensure that he and his family never returned to that poverty he had known in his childhood. He climbed his way up the ladder and into upper management where he worked ten to twelve hour days for decades. He lived frugally on the essentials only, saved his money, invested his funds wisely, and meticulously planned his retirement.  After retiring, when we all thought he would finally start enjoying the fruits of his labor, he continued to live as sparingly as before, if not more so.  He rarely traveled, did not spend money unnecessarily, saved on gas by buying economical cars, and moved into a simple home with a little acreage. As the years past, like many retirees he became more conservative with his investments, not wanting to risk losing what had taken him so long to accumulate.  He established a living trust to protect his assets and his estate for his beneficiaries should he become incapacitated or die. 

Then he got sick. And despite all of his careful planning, as a result of his weakness, it was all stolen from him in the end.

By someone close to him.

That was the other way his life was stolen, and that is what makes the thievery so complete.  Not only did my dad lose his memories and sense of self, but he also lost everything that he had lived and worked for. Almost everything that gave meaning to his time in this world was taken from him.