A few years ago my life was turned upside down by the worst scenario I could imagine. My father died of a heart attack at 46. That's right 46. It was a shock to everyone. He was in good shape, ate well for the most part, and aside from a little extra weight, was a fit, healthy man as far as we knew. That little idea was shattered of course when he passed suddenly one night.
Now, it was just my mom, my brother and I trying to cope. Times were hard. We had some money from his life insurance, but it was just enough to make it so we weren't totally struggling. At the same time though, college seemed like a foolish dream without me working my ass off for most of my senior year.
I worked six days a week to get enough to cover what I had to pay out of pocket despite the huge loan I had to take out. That being said, I did it. I got into college, and had some money to spend, not much, but enough to eat. Mom was proud that I was able to work around my financial problems and keep up decent grades. I wasn't the valedictorian by any means, but I did well.
The world however doesn't give out any "hard worker" awards and an animation degree didn't have the lucrative income I was hoping. Not straight out of school anyway. So there I was, 24 with a degree and a massive debt to prove it, living back at home with my mom and little brother. Not the best situation I could've hoped for. For the time being though, I had no other choice. I did manage to get back with the company I worked with as a teenager and even got a manager position. It was the most I had ever made and I was just pleased to make my first loan payment. Again, not the best situation, but it could have been worse I suppose.
My brother, for an example, was out of high school now, and had been working in retail for the last year. No aspirations for college apparently. He didn't have quite the same drive in the face of adversity that I did. If something seemed too hard, he would look for an easier avenue. To an extent, I actually envied his "why take the path of misery" attitude. I mean, he'd worked long enough that he had some money saved up, nothing that would get him an apartment, but something saved nonetheless. Plus, he had no debt. In fact, the more I think about it, the more it seems he may have been the smarter brother.
Overall he was a good kid. He use to get picked on a lot and I think it may have hurt his confidence quite a bit. I tried to look after him as best I could, but, being 5 years older than him, there were only so many instances where I was actually around to watch his back. He was one of those smaller kids. You know, the type of kid that's skinnier than the other guys, not athletic at all, an easy target for the alpha males. I know high school was rough on him. He never had a girlfriend and wasn't the most out going. Oddly, he had lots of girls for friends. He actually seemed rather popular amongst them, but never got any dates. I always thought that was odd. I figured once I moved back in, since he was older, we could hang out a bit. Maybe I could help him get a date or two under his belt. The big brother in me I guess. I suppose I wanted to "protect" him again in a sense. Bring a little bit of normalcy back into my life while I figured out what the hell I was going to do about my bills.
So there we were, all the kids at home, with a doting mother making us dinner. It wasn't great, but it was better than nothing. So one night we're all eating dinner, mom, as usual, whipped up some chicken dish, rambling on about our days. After dinner, mom straightened up real quick and told us she had to get to bed early because she had to leave early for work. I took the time to try and catch up with my brother. We all ate together pretty often, though we didn't have a ton of time to do the whole brother thing with us both working a lot.
So we start off with the basic chit chat. I asked how things had been with me off at school, that sort of thing.
"I've been pretty good for the most part. Mom actually started seeing someone for a little while."
"Wow, I assume that didn't go so well" I responded.
"Well enough I guess. I just don't think mom's ever really gotten over losing dad."
"Yeah, it was a shock to everyone. I don't think she's ever really going to be able to deal with that. So how have you been?"
"Pretty good. Managed to graduate, and I have a job, so things are better than they could be."
"Yeah man, I'm glad you got yourself working after school so quickly. It's easy to finish school and just get stuck doing nothing."