Greed is Never Godly

This entry coincides with my Sass with Cass podcast and has been under ‘construction’ for a few weeks.  Between work, holidays and regular life I have had to chip away at this very large topic.  My goal is to FIND MY MOTHER [#findVICKIE] … let it be known that I would not have resorted to this method if our horrible legal system wasn’t so slow and my brother hadn’t lost his morals and ethics!  I highly recommend that you give the podcast a listen as well as reading this blog entry.  Between these two media platforms the story will make sense and hopefully be shared to help me in my goal.
——————————————————— THANK YOU ————————————————-

December 26, 2021 – I posted the following on facebook as I began the return home to Kentucky from South Carolina where I was denied any information as to the whereabouts or condition of my mother:

“It has been an eye opening weekend for me. I am blessed to have a husband willing to drive 300+ miles on Christmas Day and friends offering a bed and/or a shoulder. 
I am going public now because I hope to save another family from this method of exploitation. Sadly, law enforcement and lawyers said this stuff goes on all the time and there is NOTHING anyone can do that won’t cost buckets of money. The evil that can be done with a POWER OF ATTORNEY is insane and the laws don’t provide protection or help for the exploited.
I am absolutely embarrassed. My daddy is rolling over in his grave. The rain that falls over Oconee County, SC, from this day forward, will forever be the tears of my father BECAUSE of my brother.
I have been flat out denied any contact with my mother. Police were involved because I was concerned for my mother.  This is all driven by GREED. This my folks is what a GREEDY CHRISTIAN does.
I arrived at said brothers home. After spending hours on the road and confirming our mother’s home empty….I went to the next logical place. I didn’t approach with aggression or vulgarity. I simply asked “where is mama?”. I was answered with “that’s not for you to know, where are your papers?”. While being videoed!!
I responded, “I’m blood, I don’t need papers”.
[[What I wanted to say is, “listen here you little shit, I used to wipe your ass so YOU have no right to tell me what I can and cannot do. I have the same fucking rights as you if not more”.]]
I am absolutely heart broken. I have NEVER had one cross word with my baby brother, that I can remember. He walked me down the isle and he was my ROCK when daddy took his last breath. Now, he is denying me (and my kids) access to my mother. This “Christian man” LITERALLY slithered his way in to take EVERYTHING and EVERYONE away from his own mother after she developed dementia. She has no home, no possessions that SHE valued, no car and no access to others who care.
For the record, my mother and I NEVER had any sort of harsh words nor did we ever declare the other “disowned”. She is and will always be my mother. Good. Bad. Ugly. She brought me into this world and I have NEVER wished her any harm.
There is a whole lot more to this that WILL be shared soon. Yes, this is MY SIDE of the story and YES he has his side. No matter what he says, HIS side will never justify his greed.”

—— HERE is the WHOLE LOT MORE ——

Backstory…my father passed away on March 6, 2012. I won’t go into the details about that horrible time, but upon his burial on March 10, 2012, I left my childhood home with only my memories. Unlike my sister, I couldn’t even fathem laying claim to anything of daddy’s.  Part of me just wanted to leave and protect myself and my children from any more emotional turmoil like the days leading to my daddy’s final breath.  Another part of me held on to the hope that A) mom and I would be in touch and we would hash out anything I (or my kids) may want or B) an attorney would call me and there would be a “reading of the will”. I was living in fantasy land. That isn’t how it is done.  The will was filed with probate, along with his death certificate and any other documentation regarding his affairs, by my mom and younger sister.  The will on record was written shortly after my son, the eldest grandchild, was born. I knew it wasn’t the most up-to-date will because if anyone knows my daddy, his grandkids were important to him and none of them would have gone unmentioned. The will on record, forever attached to my family, gives us a peek into the picture of our family daddy would NOT have wanted to share.  It specifically denies my sister anything, especially if he and my mother were to go together.  Of course, when that will was written, he had already disowned my sister….never spoke her name for nearly 10 years. His hurt is felt in that will. I hurt when I read it, because I know it is forever recorded that daddy disowned his 2nd born. 

All of this weighs heavy on my soul, and reading the will on record, I knew I, nor my children, would ever see anything from my daddy, not even a shirt, jacket or speck of dust.  I know this because when it came to mom’s choice, my sister is/was her favorite.  I didn’t have the energy to tangle with them both.  To my surprise, we did get a call shortly after he was laid to rest, at which time I asked my brother for a .22 darringer pistol and he promised it to me,  though I never got it.  He was also arranging to deliver some of daddy’s tools to my son. They were the bottom of the barrell tools, a mix match of things he obviously didn’t want, but they were daddy’s and my son certainly wanted them. Sadly, my brother wouldn’t even come to our home to deliver them, he had us meet him at the interstate.  He seemed pretty sour during the exchange, but I chaulked it up to us all grieving in our own way. That was a glimpse into the things to come and I didn’t see it.  My sister kind of did the same when she finally made her way towards her home in Ohio a week or so after she had done her part in handling the affairs.  She met us at the interstate, handed off some hats and license plates, again, for my son. I don’t recall anything being given to me nor my daughter.  So be it. I let it go.

Years went by and I heard talk. My name was being thrown around in conjunction with another will that I supposedly “shredded, in the office of gas station beside Huddle House“…. Folks, I can honestly say, I have NEVER stepped foot in that particular gas station, especially the office. Folks that repeated this rumor would laugh and ask “where does Vickie get this stuff?“.  I just let it ride…secretly, I began to wonder and tried to make sense of things.  The only explanation I could muster was that my mother must be really sick because that is one really tall tale that only a sick individual could conjure up about their own child.  The fact that my siblings allowed the rumor to gain traction and didn’t call me to even try to soften the blow was yet another glimpse into the things to come and again, I didn’t see it.  I let it go.

My sister had ultimately became the ‘guardian’, if you will, over our mother’s finances.  Things were happening fast and I took note. Mama would visit us on her way back from Ohio after spending time with my sister. Sometimes she would take trips with her but from what I gathered it was mostly to go shopping for things for the home she was building. Her last, memorable, visit was in March 2013. Her van was full of fixtures for this new home. She took the kids and bought them both iPads as a “late Christmas gift”. She refused to stick around and watch my daughter’s soccer game. Her urgency to return to Seneca should have been a clue, but I didn’t see it at the time.

Within a year, almost to the date, on March 12, 2012, my brother’s mortgage is ‘satisfied’ and our childhood home was sold for a mere $130k.  Ironically, she closed on March 25, 2013. That was the day that 306 Brewer Lane, Seneca, SC was no longer “our home”.  Today, I think of that home every time I hear the song, “The House That Built Me”. The home was worth far more than that to me, because I had literally poured many years of sweat equity into those grounds.  I covered every square inch of that property over my lifetime there.  I had good, bad and indifferent memories.  The many pounds of dirt I heaved in a wheel barrell when the pool was put in in July 1988. The many times I drug railroad ties along the driveway, at mom’s direction, to prevent the yard from washing away. The grass I had to cut. The “straight line winds” that nearly ripped the roof off in 1995. The childhood items that were tucked away in the attic or garage were being pulled from their roots soon. I expected a call to get an opportunity to retrieve them.  That call never came.  The ball was rolling to erase the Brewer name and I didn’t see it. 

I held on to faith in my siblings, remembering our father and his words, “one day, all you will have is each other“.  Being the eldest, maybe I should have swooped in and asserted myself to be included.  I sit here today and think that maybe I should have been that true ‘bat shit crazy, redneck, black sheep, embellishing liar’ for which I had been and would be painted to be and held feet to the flame for the distruction of my father’s good name.  I opted to hold out and let my faith be tested.  For 8 years, I remained steadfast in believing my faith would be restored because I am a good person.  I was none of those things my own mother painted me to be.

Shortly after the sale of our childhood home, almost as if magic, my mother took up residence at HER new home built with my daddy’s money on my daddy’s land at 511 Strawberry Farm Road, Seneca, SC.  Property that was once just known as “Reedy Fork District” or “A.W. Brewer Homeplace“.  1.19 acres of which was given to my father in February 1974 from the estate of his uncle, Willie Brewer, who had never married.  I can only assume that my father was perhaps important to my great uncle or he was just respectful of his father’s wishes and made sure the land stayed in the family.  Willie had been given the land by his mother, Roxie H., and being as he had no family, my father was fortunate enough to be given his little nugget of the family land.  Then in 1985, just before my daddy’s father, Claud S. Brewer, would pass away, 1.43 acres was given to my father.  His father had been given the land from his father, A.W. Brewer.  Now my daddy, by all accounts, was the last living “BREWER” who would hold onto a small nugget of the original 80+ acres of “A.W. Brewer Homeplace“, his grandfather, who worked hard on the railroad with dreams of giving his kids parcels of land to raise their families.  Looking back, I can remember my daddy having 3 mobile homes on the properties for many years.  He rented them out for extra income.  They were joined with a road named “Tanner Lane”.  I resided in 2 out of 3 of those mobile homes in my lifetime.  My grandfather, Claud Brewer, also resided there…and died there.  My mother absolutely hated that he had that property (that is how she referred to it) and even when he got sick told me many times that she wish he had just “gotten rid of that property“. 

My daddy had always told me, last being in 1998, that each of his kids (3 of us) would once own ‘equal shares of this family land’.  I was unable to convince him in 1998 to allow me to build a home there, even with the promise to keep it in the family.  My brother had already purchased his own acreage just a few miles away and had a home.  My sister had been disowned, moved away and very unlikely to step foot back in Oconee County. Little did we know, God had other plans.  I had left and returned with my family and wanted to raise my family on that very land.  My daddy wouldn’t budge on his plan.  He had faith that one day all three of us would own a part of the “A.W. Brewer Homeplace”. 

My mother found out a few years later, after I had returned to Kentucky with my family, that daddy had refused to let me build on the property and she became irate.  She told me around 2000 that she “just wished he would get rid of that Brewer cursed property because it isn’t of any value to her”.  She would repeat this many times over the next five to ten years. Another glimpse into the wrath to come. I didn’t see.

Sadly, daddy’s wishes would never come true, because his life was taken too soon and his will, one I knew existed but never surfaced, was apparently destroyed.  By 2013, I had watched my mother build a home on that very property daddy held onto until his death and she loathed.  She removed the existance of “Tanner Lane” and erased my daddy’s ties to the land.  She removed the tree my daddy planted, at an early age, which stood at least 100 feet tall, dubbed “Randy’s Christmas Tree” and removed the foundation of the home he grew up in, lost in a fire when he was young.  The money he made his short 60 years of life, was now being used to build a 4000sq ft home for my mother.  His kids or grandkids wouldn’t be bestowed the honor of owning any portion of the Brewer legacy. The ball was now rolling faster and she had erased the Brewer name and I saw it this time.  I questioned my faith again.

By 2015, I had come to terms with the dynamics of my family and the fact that I didn’t fit in with my siblings or mother.  Any attempt we, my family, made to reach them went unanswered. We have texts dated 2019 that were NEVER answered. Eventually, we retreated into our own lives.  We never forgot them.  We never wished them harm.  I told my kids, even into their adulthood, that anytime they wanted to reach out to their nanny, aunts, uncle or cousins, it was up to them.  I never wanted to tell them they weren’t allowed to get to know or be around their family.  I made yearly trips, multiple times a year, to pay my respects to my father.  Visit friends and family.  I went by my mother’s every trip.  I kept tabs on her as best as I could 363 miles away.  I still had family and friends in the area that would let me know when they saw and/or talked to her.  She and I never had cross words to the point that I was told “she never wanted to see me again”.  It was as if we both just respected eachother’s distance and shared only what needed to be shared.  There was no building of a mother and daughter relationship between us because she still favored my sister over me and I knew my place. It was no secret that she would tell me the horrible things she hated about each of my siblings and I knew that she would say the same things about me when I wasn’t around. I didn’t repeat those stories. I never have.

Fast foward to 2021…yes…sadly 6 more years passed and I hadn’t heard from my siblings.  Hearing from them would be a blessing and I wouldn’t turn them away or greet them with disrespect.  My heart does not allow me to hold onto that hurt because I know I have done nothing wrong.  December 6, 2021 my sister called me, but left no message.  I waited for a call back though I felt like I should call her.  I knew deep down it was not be “that” call because people I have been in contact with knew my mother to be fine.  I checked all of my sources before I was ultimately notified, 4 days later, that I needed to call my sister.  When we spoke it was like we were complete strangers.  I didn’t recognize her voice and I struggled with keeping calm while she carried on small talk. I just wanted to know the reason for her call.  I grew impatient because I knew something was wrong and she wasn’t telling me fast enough.  Finally, I just asked, “what’s wrong with mother?”.  She told me, “she was diagnosed a year+/- prior as bi-polar with “multiple stages” of dementia”.  I wasn’t surprised nor devastated.  Ironically, I was relieved.  Within moments of hearing those words, I felt a very large boulder lift from my soul. I replayed all those times I would sit with her and have conversations that started out calm but turned sour in a blink of an eye. The times I just left without an “I love you” between us. If this was a true diagnosis, mama had been sick for years! She didn’t hate me. She didn’t despise my existence. I wasn’t a reminder of her young life cut short.  My sister went on to fill me in on drama between her and our brother. I grew increasingly concerned about WHERE she was and she wasn’t any help.  Now, I have to backup and say that the main reason I made this call was because several people had notifyed me of mama’s estate was being sold.  According to my sister, she too had just learned of the estate sell.  All of this was also proof that our mother had now chosen my brother over us sisters. 

Now, I must take a moment here and clarify.  Again, if this is a true diagnosis, this was NOT a conscious “choice” like one makes between underwear or going commando.  This meant mama wasn’t “choosing” either of us over the other.  She was surviving the only way she knew how, with a debilitation that silently took her life many years ago.  Such a diagnosis had gone unrecognized all these years, because our family never talked about these things.  She had survived without many years of medication or the attention needed to help her.  There is no denying, again, if this diagnosis were true, we had all been scarred for life because this had gone untreated and unspoken.  My daddy’s voice played in my head, “one day, all you will have is eachother“.  I needed to find a way to get to my brother.  I needed to talk to him.  I tried to reach out to him, repeatedly, without success.

On December 22, 2021, I decided I would try a rather shot in the dark attempt to reach my brother.  Knowing he could potentially reject a certified letter, I felt this was the only way to get his attention.  I got online, found a jar with inspirational quotes, and sent as a gift.  I signed the gift card with the following note:

            I hope this motivates you to call me (###)###-#### would like to know what is going on… -Cassandra

I was notified that the package arrived on December 24.  I had decided not to deny my family Christmas, so I gave him until Christmas Day to reach out to me.  By 5pm, I hadn’t gotten a call or text, so I packed a bag and made the trip.

Wanna know what happened next?  Go give my podcast a listen!  I am not going to type it all out right now.  Hop over to the podcast and listen to Season 3, Episode 1 “Greed is Never Godly”.