There was no opportunity for me to post here yesterday because my wife remained home until finally leaving us very early in the evening for Vancouver where she tends to stay (such is my sorry marriage).
My younger brother did not leave in the afternoon to go drinking at some bar (as is his usual practice) ─ probably because it was getting to become bothersome now that so many of them have closed due to provincial restrictions on numbers of people allowed in places like bars and restaurants at any one time (50 people is the maximum) due to the COVID-19 panic.
Now that he uses public transportation when he intends to be out drinking, there is also more effort involved in getting to these venues.
I had wanted to have a discussion with my wife and her two sons once all three of them were here, and my brother was not to be privy to it. Thus, I had thought to have that discussion once he was gone.
The discussion was to impress upon the three of them that if they were unable to come up with the $800-shortfall that my chequing account was in where the monthly mortgage was concerned, then I was going to have to ask my brother to provide the money. (The mortgage will probably get debited on Monday.)
And if I was going to have to do that, then I would have to explain to him many things that he is entirely unaware of, even though he shares ownership of our home with me.
For one thing, he believes that the mortgage is well less than half of what it really is; but due to two remortgages that he knows nothing of, it has not been that manageable since the first half of 2010. .
As well, the present full mortgage (which includes a line of credit that has been exhausted by my gambling-addicted wife) is far larger than it was back in 2010. I would estimate that back then, the mortgage was 35% of what it is today.
And had it remained what it was, by today it might be well under 21% of what it now is.
The house title is in my name only, because my brother had certain issues back in early 2002 (when we collaborated upon buying the property) that made it legally safer and financially cheaper to have me ─ a first-time home buyer ─ listed as the sole owner.
So that's the short story.
In my opinion, my wife has virtually used up any of the value of our share in a sale of the house.
So I said to her that if her sons were unable to cover the $800 she had gambled away earlier this month, then I would have to tell him this morning everything. And in asking him to go to his financial institution for the needed money, I would promise to turn over full ownership of the house to him this next July for $1.
He could then do what he wants ─ sell the place and keep whatever he got for it, as long as he paid off all of the debt my wife and I owe to the bank holding the mortgage.
Selling the house would mean, of course, that we would be at my usually drunken brother's mercy as tenants here. And if he sold the place, then we of course would have to move.
I could not live in an apartment with my wife's two sons, even if I didn't mind moving to one ─ which I very much do. Also, my wife is my wife in name only. We have not been physically intimate since March 2013, and in fact there was one year ─ perhaps 2014 ─ when I do not believe that she slept here at home more than seven different occasions over the course of the entire year.
So when she asked what I would do if the house was sold, I told her that I would move far from here to someplace where living was much cheaper. I would have to abandon practically everything I owned because I do not drive, and therefore I would not have the means of transporting anything.
She would not choose to go away with me ─ I know that.
My brother would be on his own ─ I would never again choose to live with him because his daily drinking has gotten to be too intolerable. He is by nature a miserable drunk.
I would be alone ─ and unquestionably, it would be painfully so initially. And although I did not say it to my wife, I quite expect that I would finally die. I would just prefer not to do it here in Surrey where I have virtually been a prisoner for most of my 70 years of life.
The conversation and the topic's mostly unspoken consequences were excruciating for me.
My wife is a little more than 23 years my junior.
It hurts me beyond telling that once I die, she will have very little. She would be entitled to 50% of my government pension as my widow ─ I had worked for the federal government ─ but for her that would not even be a gross figure of $790. I have two other pensions that she would not have any entitlement to, and between all three of them I clear as a net value around $2,300 a month.
Obviously, I am worth much more to my wife alive than I am dead.
She has no investment income. The only work she can get is that of restaurant work ─ generally as kitchen help. Her income is decent enough in partnership with me, but if she had to live on her own earnings and her widow's share of my main pension, her life would be quite restricted without help from her two working sons.
The lads both have jobs, but neither of them earns a great deal ─ at very best, their annual incomes are always in the low $30,000-range.
Out talk was extremely upsetting for her; but unlike how I felt, her upset seemed to be more one of anger, even though she knew and admitted that we were in our fix due to her fault.
As the afternoon waned toward the evening, I distanced myself from both my brother who was watching a very loud movie on T.V. in the living room as he drank beer, and my wife and her eldest son. I don't think the youngest son was yet home.
I could hear her and the older lad talking loudly in Thai. She had already told me that he had declared that coming up with $800 was impossible for him. Probably now, she was struggling with some workable option to avoid surrender of the house to my brother.
I lay upon my bed here upstairs into the evening, and then finally I went downstairs to essentially just hang about in case she and her sons ─ the younger was now home ─ wanted to talk with me.
My wife, though, began readying to head away. I stood near her downstairs as she gathered up some things, and then she walked off without a word to me and left.
As I said earlier, she generally spends her weekends in Vancouver. If this was what she was about to do, then I had no solution concerning what I would need to do in the morning ─ that is, to approach my then-sober brother and tell him all, while also making the offer to him to have him provide the missing mortgage sum in exchange for full ownership of the house in July.
He would need to do it today, for he would not be able to deal with his financial institution on Sunday, and Monday would most likely be too late ─ the mortgage debit would have been attempted and failed.
And so I ventured into the boys' den area where the youngest was involved on his computer with someone else he was speaking remotely with via microphone and headphones, and the eldest was seated before a laptop watching videos or something.
The eldest looked up, and I broached the subject of the mortgage emergency by first offering to him an explanation of why we were in such a shortfall.
When his mother had gambled early this month, she had actually withdrawn $2,000 on March 3 from the chequing account ─ which was comprised entirely of my monthly pensions that had been deposited there late in February.
Over the next few days, she tried to muster and put money back, ultimately depositing $1,600, but also withdrawing another $500.
So overall, she was in default of $900.
I had a balance of a little over $100 in another account, so if I transferred that over, then we would still need $800 to cover the coming monthly mortgage payment.
When my wife earlier this month confessed to me what she had done, she had begged me not to tell her sons. The youngest lad especially gets furious at her and will even use profanity.
She has gone so far as to enter into a provincial self-exclusion program to stop her gambling, but she is unable to say no to her many friends when they want her to party; and once she has a few drinks, she can then lose her inhibitions about gambling.
And that's what had happened.
I had kept my silence this month, but I felt that I had to open up to the eldest lad to further convey that this was an emergency not of my making. It was his mother's doing, and for that he and his brother had some responsibility and needed to know.
Well, it developed that he and his mother had worked out an arrangement. When she left here, before returning to Vancouver she was going to pressure or beg her friend cum boss for an emergency paycheque ─ the friend owns the restaurant where my wife presently works, and she (the friend) had told my wife that due to the COVID-19 restrictions now in place, conditions had seriously damaged the restaurant's bottom line to the point that the business was badly hurting.
Meantime, my eldest stepson was to work in conjunction with his younger brother who would today contribute $250. The eldest lad would transfer to me last evening $590, and his brother would pay him the $250.
My wife ─ upon having her cheque cashed ─ would deposit $250 from whatever she got into the chequing account.
I knew nothing of this arrangement until the lad told me. In other words, he did not need to be made aware of his mother's gambling relapse.
And so I felt that I had to let her know that the jig was up ─ the older lad knew about the gambling.
Here was the course of the texting that was exchanged between my wife and I:
Me:
I thought you were gone for the weekend, so I told [her eldest son] what I was planning to say to [my brother] in the morning, and I also told him why we're so broke this month.
Now he knows -- you should have told me what the two of you were planning.
She:
Leave on street
I think she probably meant that she was going to have to live on the street after this.
Me:
Don't move to the street yet.
[The oldest lad] seemed to be understanding.
[The younger lad] was on the computer talking to someone, so he might not have heard me.
Perhaps [the older lad] won't say anything to his younger brother.
😇
She:
Now or later same
Then she added more:
He already ask me about you told them thank you
I didn't quite understand that, but I responded:
Oh,boy....
She:
My bad sorry
Me:
I know you are.
And I added a sad-faced emoji.
I have heard no more from her since that exchange.
With my younger brother home yesterday, there was to be no early bedtime for me. I sat up operating our T9 Android 8.1 TV Box to find episodes of some of the T.V. series we follow, and it was at least 12:30 a.m. before I was to bed.
I must report that last afternoon I actually sat outside in the backyard and sunned my shaven head for over a half hour while I was barefooted. It was my first time this year. Yet I cannot certainly say that I can see any change in my skin's colouring.
Today has also been sunny enough for sunning, but I never got the opportunity to take advantage. When I could have done so, my brother was outside fertilizing the backyard lawn ─ I took these three candid photos through a rather dirty window:
And two days ago, I took these two candid photos at 5:27 p.m. of my wife sneaking a smoke out in the backyard:
It is presently 6:15 p.m., and it appears that my younger brother plans to remain home again this evening to do his drinking. I almost find this to be an intrusion ─ I do not enjoy sitting up late. I would rather get to bed early and potentially do something in the very early a.m. hours.
I have yet to exercise today, so I am going to stop blogging now and tackle some in my bedroom.
I want to have a bath after that, so it will be some while yet before I put our Android TV Box into operation (my brother doesn't have any facility with its use, so that role is mine).
As I said earlier in this post, it pains me beyond words that I can do nothing for my wife nor our feeble marriage. I am impotent as a breadwinner, and a marriage partner.
My self-disgust is only matched by my rage at God for being so damned uncaring that He doesn't give a fig about me, her, nor our supposedly sacred marital bond.
I love my wife, despite everything. I want more than Eternal life itself that I could have a successful marriage with her and make her joyous in every conceivable way ─ not be the failure in all things that I truly am.
I love my wife, despite everything. I want more than Eternal life itself that I could have a successful marriage with her and make her joyous in every conceivable way ─ not be the failure in all things that I truly am.
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