TV tropes in real life...

So you know that old tired TV trope where a long lost relative dies and leaves you money? You know that never happens in real life right? Right? Ummm, right?

Most of you know the background story but I will share in case you don't. And just because it's really a great story.

Brent and I decided to get married when we were still in high school.  Actually March of our senior year. By the time graduation rolled around we were living together, that's a story for another day, it's more innocent than it sounds. But anyway, we were already pretty well established on the road we were going to walk. For graduation his grandmother decided to give him a trip to go back to Michigan to visit with family. Great, very generous. Now his mother and his grandmother had a very strained relationship, basically no relationship, and Ann said she didn't think this would be a good idea, but Brent had never had real issue with his grandmother and I was in the belief that "Hey, this is your grandmother! How nice to go see her!"

So off he went. And then the fun started. We didn't know when he left when he was coming back, so when he got there and called home I asked. He still didn't know. A few days later I asked again. She still hadn't told him. So by this time he told her she had to let him know because I needed to make sure I was off work to pick him up and make arrangements. And then she told him he wasn't going back. There was no return ticket. She had decided that if his parents weren't going to do anything about him marrying that trashy trailer park girl she was. Yep, she basically kidnapped him for graduation. And now you see why she and Ann had such a strained relationship.

Her plan was that he would stay there and she would get him in to Purdue and he would just forget about me and go on to live the life she had planned for him. Now a few things that didn't work, if she had known her grandson at all she should have realized that if she wanted to effectively bribe him it should have been University of Michigan. And he was already on a deferred enlistment for the Navy so getting out of that wasn't going to be as simple as she probably thought. Oh and the whole he loved me and hates to be bossed around parts. So instead of staying with her he called his Aunt and Uncle and they came and got him and I tapped our savings account and got him a ticket home.

Time for the wedding rolls around and I am still insistent that this is his grandmother so we send her an invitation. Ann says, not a good idea. We do it anyway and don't hear a word from her. She did call Ann and berate her for letting it go through. Now Ann and Jack got married very young as well and understood that nobody could have told them it was a bad idea, even though it ended in divorce a few years later, they still knew that there was no telling us what to do at that point either.

And that's the thing, Dona wasn't wrong. I was a trashy girl who lived in a trailer. Brent could have done what looked like a better choice than marry me and join the Navy. He could have gone on to college and majored in any number of things. And we were crazy to decide to get married at 17. But there are ways of saying all of these things without trying to control a life. There are things she could have done to be supportive of Brent but it was her way or no way. And because of that we didn't hear from her again until after C was born.

I did the whole, this is your grandmother thing again and we sent her a birth announcement. Only grandson has the first great grandchild. She deserved to know. And she actually responded.  She sent a letter to Brent, Christopher and Sharon. Yep. With my name on the birth announcement in front of her she decided to take the petty route and give me a random one. For me this was the final note I needed to know that she was never going to be different.

Our contact with her over the next few years was just as bizarre. She sent money a couple of Christmases.  We sent a thank you note letting her know we had put it away in Christopher's savings account for him to have when he was older. Didn't hear from her again until C was around 4 or 5 and she contacted us through her sister. Aunt Dee let us know that Dona wanted all of our social security numbers so she could put us in her will. We told Aunt Dee she didn't need our numbers for that, just our names. Dona insisted that unless we send her the numbers we weren't in the will. We told her that was fine.

About 8 or 9 years ago we took a trip to Tucson and visited with friends of ours and it made it into the Christmas letter that year. We got a nasty letter from Dona letting us know how selfish we were for not stopping in and seeing Brent's uncle who was there at the time and dying. Well, Dona, if you had let us know at any point in time that Sheldon was sick, let alone dying, we might have. Or might not have since we hadn't heard from him in 15 years by that point either. And then here and there after that we would get a letter after our Christmas letter went out. No I'm sorry, no I was wrong, no come see me. Nothing. Just a note here and there and always addressed just to Brent. I've mentioned before that the one thing Brent's dad got early was to keep a relationship with his son he needed to make sure he kept one with me. She didn't see that.

So jump forward to few months ago. Brent had checked the mail and tossed the stack towards me. There was an envelope for C in the stack. From a legal firm in Tucson addressed to him by his full name. I sent him a text asking if he had applied for an internship out there or if he wanted me to open the letter. Brent came back in to the living room and asked me what I thought the letter was. I told him that honestly I believed it was from a law firm telling us his grandmother was dead. And when C texted back to open the letter that's what it was. We regret to inform you....and then the will. She left her house and all of its belongings to C. And everything else to George W. Bush.

I know, right?

And here we are at a good blog length and I haven't even gotten to the trip. So more to come. As in what does a 20 year old do with a house in a retirement community? And George Bush? Really?