Another burst in Well now

In my ADHD sort of way,
I'm just going over the history of times and events undocumented,
trying to build a foundation for what is happening now,
because, if I have trouble (or probably will have trouble) remembering all this stuff
(one of my primary reasons for recording my life and thoughts in the first place),
how can I write it out publicly and expect anyone (including future me)
to make sense of it?

Let's see, I was talking about Dad.
This is both prelude to Dad's current situation 
and the complexity of relationship
that has become The Current Drama of the Sisters Three.

When Katrina hit, I lost pretty much everything, including the lovely little house
I was renting in New Orleans proper.
$500 a month for a 2 bedroom bungalow a block away from City Park.
It was a phenomenal deal then and will never happen again.

So much housing had been destroyed by the storm.
There was absolutely nothing to be rented anywhere,
so I moved to Mom and Dad's house in the New Orleans suburb where I had grown up.
Mom had entered her declining years and so it was a mutually beneficial situation.

As Mom got sicker, my father was adamant that he could take care of her himself.
He wouldn't hear of anyone outside the family being used to help
with her day to day care, so it was actually good that I was there.
Family, that was help he would allow.

Then my older brother Nathe,
always a problematic soul, had his massive break-down.
(Police were involved and a psychiatric hospital
and, oh, let's not remember that time too clearly.)
Nathe ended up also returning to my parents' home -
with Dad and declining Mom and displaced Me.

I cannot describe what a strange crew the four of us were
for the year and a half of my mother's waning time.
Even if I had wanted to leave my parents on their own,
there was nowhere for me to go.
Nathe was trapped in that house because of a lifetime of poor planning
and willful bridge burning.
I have never in my life met anyone as proud of being a pain in the ass
as Nathe.  

Because of his winning personality,
Nathe had managed to retire from the Navy
hardly any higher in rank than when he started.
Why, you might ask.
Well, Nathe was always working every system.
He joined the Navy - the service with all the big ships -
and resolved NEVER to take a position on board a vessel of any type.
I don't know if that was a major contribution to his lack of ranking up
or if it was his "clever" (in his mind) plans to beat whatever system he put himself it,
but Nathe didn't rank up much and 
his retirement benefits reflected that failure to progress. 

Nathe retired on a military pension that couldn't support him.
After the service Nathe couldn't keep a civilian job for any length of time
because, as he once told me,
"Every boss I ever worked for was a moronic asshole 
who was threatened by my intelligence."
He either got fired over something he blamed on his employers
or he quit in a fit of righteous indignation over some problem he created
but, again, blamed on anyone but himself.
So he became, in his fifties, virtually unemployable.
Go figure.

Anyway, he returned to my parents' house out of financial necessity.

Then Mom passed.

It took a bit of time, but I eventually moved out on my own again,
leaving Dad and Nathe alone in the house.
And that's how it was for fifteen years.
Dad and Nathe living together.

Dad was in his 70's and Nathe was in his 50's.
Dad had never lived alone in his life.
Although he was still relatively healthy,
he was starting to need help with the day-to-day things
- laundry, groceries, etc. - 
and he also needed someone just to be there.

Nathe couldn't afford to live alone.
In fact, there was really nowhere else for Nathe to go.
There wasn't a single other family member who would take him in
due to his conscious efforts to be a jackass
(just for the fun of being a jackass).
I was pretty much the only one other than Dad
who didn't hold a grudge over past and repeated offenses,
(I'm a puppy who tends to forgive anyone once they stop kicking me.)
and I was in no position to help support him,
barely back on my feet myself.

So Dad and Nathe lived together fairly comfortably
when they weren't banging their heads against each other.
Dad would have much preferred to live with Mom
and Nathe would much preferred to win the lottery.
(We were soooo blood.)

 It was an arrangement that suited the rest of the family.
Two problems were taking care of each other.
Everyone saw Nathe's role as Dad's caretaker,
a position he was paid for in room and board and even his own car.
Nathe often felt trapped and resentful,
and told me, his only familial confidante, so.

My resentful frankly selfish family saw Nathe's taking care of Dad
as a fitting role for him and lovely convenient for the rest of us.
If Nathe took care of Dad, we didn't have to.
No one said this of course.
The others might not have even admitted it to themselves,
but it was an absolute truth.

Fifteen years -
Then, completely unexpectedly,
Nathe died.

And that's when things really fell apart.