Family troubles

So I received an email from my aunt Noreen yesterday. The family has finally sold my grandmas house after many years as my grandpa cannot live on his own anymore. My aunts have paid all the taxes and such on the house over those years and recently have done all the leg work for getting the house sold, cleaning and packing and such. My dad has not been able to do any of this leg work as he had a collapsed lung last year and my step mom has just finished kemo for breast cancer. There was issue with the money from the house being split evenly between the 3 of them (dad, aunt kate and aunt noreen) as my aunts have been paying for the house and have done all the work to get it sold and they feel that dad should reimburse them for the costs and he refuses. They tried to confront him about it and he got real mad and started to call the police, there was some sort of physical altercation where my dad had a fall and in the end he did call the police. There is now a 5 year restraining order on my aunts and my uncle against my dad for no contact of any sort.

I sometimes cannot understand what people are like. My dad and his sisters have always been very close and I would have said that my dad didnt give two figs for money (that was more my step moms thing and she may well be the pressure on my dad that got this whole thing out of hand I just dont know). Money has come between my family and it makes no sense to me. I know family can be difficult as we dont get to choose them like we can our friends but then again friends come and go family should be the rock we can always count on.

Its amazing how money can effect our lives. Without it we can really struggle, with to much we can get very self destructive or we can do great good. I guess the message is to keep in mind that pursuing money is ok to do but it needs to be a means to an ends not the ends itself. For me the end result of pursuing money is to improve the lives of myself, my family, my friends and my community. Mother Theresa didnt keep the money she earned but she did earn loads, how else could she have done all the great good that she did poor?

I hope that if ever I am able to make large amounts of money I will use it as a tool to improve the worlds I live in. When I was poor I took so much and when I am rich I hope to give back 10 fold more then I ever took.

Kirsten