My Sister Sue Ellen

This is the story of an inheritance gone awry. Of an injustice, or perhaps of my just desserts -- I guess it depends on who's telling the story. I still can't think of it without becoming confused and sad. But at least I'm not angry any more. I've had to wait nearly ten years for the anger and bitterness to drain away, so that I could tell this tale. Here goes:

My last real circus job was with Culpepper & Merriweather Circus, out of Hugo, Oklahoma. I was their Publicity Director. I had the job for two seasons, and enjoyed spreading the inflated ballyhoo I was expected to deliver in each podunk town we played. Towards the end of my second season with them Trey Key, the owner, stopped sending me my salary. I visited the show down in Texas just before it closed to confront him about it. Business was slow, but would undoubtedly pick up in the last two weeks -- so he'd make it up to me then. Not really having much of a choice, I swallowed his baloney with as much grace as possible, finished up my work, and drove up to Minneapolis to visit my mother before looking for some winter work. 

I never got my six weeks back salary. Trey Key never answered any of my phone calls, emails, or letters again. And mom told me she had been diagnosed with congestive heart failure -- the doctors gave her six months to live. She didn't want to move into a nursing home at the end of her life, so she asked me to take care of her until it was over as her live-in attendant. She'd pay me enough so I could make my child support payments each month. And they were staggering payments -- when Amy and I parted we had eight children. Even after our son Irvin died at age nine the Child Support authorities continued to charge me for him as well as for the seven remaining kids. 

I took care of mom -- but not for six months. She lasted nearly two more years. I cooked and cleaned and washed for her, and towards the end I gave her showers and enemas, too. She wore a diaper, which I changed several times each day. As she grew weaker my brother Billy and my sister Sue Ellen systematically stripped her of  her jewelry, copper cookware, furniture, and anything else they took a fancy to. 

"She won't be needing it anymore" they told me on several occasions. "Don't worry; you'll be taken care of in the will."

 The only thing they didn't get was mom's silverware; she had me hide it under her bed to give to my sister, Linda, when she came to visit from Oregon. This really enraged Sue Ellen -- and maybe that's why she did what she did.

 The day of my mother's death the office informed me that I had 48 hours to clear out of her apartment, so they could get the place rented quickly. And instead of attending the reading of mom's will, I found myself in Hennepin County District Court, being told by a judge that the executor of mom's will, my sister Sue Ellen, had filed suit to have my portion of the inheritance -- forty thousand dollars -- delivered directly to my former wife Amy. I would not receive a penny of it. After Amy received the payment I wrote her to ask for a few thousand dollars of it back to get a place to live while I looked for work. She refused. Her reply was unpleasant and vindictive. I still don't like to think about it. 

My home teacher, Dick Johnson, let me stay in his basement rent free until I could get back on my feet. That's when I panhandled on Nicollet Mall for my living -- and got a phone call from Thailand from Bruce Veldhuisen offering me a job at his English School in Ban Phe if I could pay my own way there. With help from a lot of good friends and members of my Ward I got enough money together to fly to Thailand and begin a new career as a TEFL teacher. 

So . . . did Sue Ellen do me harm or do me a favor when she had the court take away my inheritance? With that money I could have started a new life in the United States -- and without it I felt forced to flee to Thailand to escape further depredations by the Child Support and Court authorities. In the long run, things turned out better for me than I could ever have imagined. I'm now at peace, living in Provo, near many of my children and grandchildren. I spend my days writing poetry. I'm about as happy as I believe I can ever be. 

As for Sue Ellen, I asked her several years ago why she felt impelled to do such a bitchy thing to her own brother. Her reply was incoherent and filled with curses and blasphemy. But the gist of it was the same as Iago's at the end of Shakespeare's Othello:

"Demand me nothing. What you know, you know. From this time forth I never will speak word."