Family stuff

Mom calls me Sunday and actually catches me home for a change. Usually I get a message and return her call. I am just doing dishes at the time. I wipe my hands and take the portable phone into my room where I relax on the bed as we talk.

As usual she begins with asking how I am doing and adding that she hasn't anything much to report. The news, as always, is about the family, especially about my younger brother Rob and his wife who she lives with. She is taking Rob out for his birthday tomorrow. He's 47.

Silvana, his wife, has just brought down a financial record showing Mom's "expenses" for the year. Mom contributed $200,000 of the $600,000 cost of the house when they bought it two years ago. The purchase agreement was altered by Silvana after Mom's lawyer saw it and before Mom signed it. She removed Mom's name from the deed and added a clause that the Rob and Silvana would take care of Mom's expenses to make her life easier, deducting from the $200,000 as they need to pay utility bills but they would not charge her rent.

The list of expenses Silvana brought down to Mom for 2009, the first year she has detailed it, was for more than $1000/mo. That's some heating bill. They have also billed her "her share" of the Land Transfer Tax from the purchase although her name is not on the deed. Indeed! Mom is frustrated and feels betrayed. Rob brushes it off, saying she is "losing it" and doesn't understand. No one else understands either as it isn't any of our business. Mom doesn't want us to raise a fuss. When Rob and Silvana are upset with her they take off and don't tell her where they are going. She feels isolated and ignored. She thinks they are punishing her but she doesn't want anyone else to raise a fuss.

I don't know what to think, to get angry or inquisitive. Neither approach would seem to serve me. Silvana raised such a fuss the last time I tried to ask why Mom was so upset last summer. She was outraged, embarrassed, aghast that I would think such things or her. Me fears the lady doth protest too much. I suppose a thousand a month is a reasonable rent for her share of the house, a basement suite in a large house in Oakville, a very expensive area, but it certainly isn't just her share of the utility bills.

I called Rob for his birthday but I didn't raise any of Mom's concerns. He talked about his work training holistic allergists and treating autistic children who he claims he can cure by negating the effects of vaccinations given when they were much younger. He can't claim to cure anything though, as the big guns of western medicine would move in and shut him down if he did.

Interestingly, today there was a news feature on the CBC website about a UK researcher whose studies linking measles and mumps vaccinations to subsequent autism in children have been retracted and apologized for by the journal that published them. His studies have been denounced as flawed and misguided, but instead of being countered with other researched evidence, medical authorities are trying to have the researcher's rights to practice medicine and do research revoked permanently to silence him.

How can we be moving into the Age of Aquarius while these power and wealth mongers still run the show?

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