"It's like a Greek tragedy." --Larn

Ring the bells and put on your finest! The Athena family's goin' down the toilet!!

As is customary on such occasions, I called home yesterday (Father's Day) to speak to my father on the phone.

Now, I hadn't actually worked out in my head how that conversation would go. Considering his recent spats of silent treatments and his general manic-depressive psychosis, that conversation could have been disasterous on its own.

After all, I don't really talk to my father more than twice a year.

(And that's a helluva lot, compared to the family members who live with him.)

But when I called home, my mother picked up - and, of course, I didn't want to shove her off the phone right away. So I asked how she was doing.

She let out a pained laugh and said "Um...they're going."

Oh, fuck.

When my mom stops pretending things are fine, even for a second, you know there's some shit stuck in a fan somewhere.

First of all, Dad stopped talking to everyone again. Let's recap:

November 1st - Thanksgiving: No talking to family members.
Thanksgiving: Minor talking to family members.
Thanksgiving - Dec. 19th: No talking to family members.
Dec. 19th - Dec. 24th: Only talking to Doug and myself.
Dec. 25th - Jan. 4th: Talking to entire family.
Jan. 4th - May 15th: No talking to Mom or Kyle.
May 15th - 20th: Talking to entire family.
May 20th - present: No talking to anyone.

... Good. Great. On we go.

So he's not talking to anyone.

But his creditors are certainly talking.

By reading his emails (and fielding phone calls), Mom has discovered that Dad is filing for business bankruptcy - finally. His business was SUPPOSED to be closed 2 years ago due to overwhelming debt, but he was evidently in denial and continued to spend money on the companies, which he ran covertly from our basement.

Now it's really gotten bad, because he is admitting that he can't fix it and needs to shut the door, once and for all.

Fine. Great.

But Dad didn't play by the rules. He made some business purchases on a joint credit card - which he had promised never to do - and by defaulting on this debt, he is going to fuck Mom's credit too.

Today, Mom is seeing a lawyer to see about what her options are. You see, they may force the sale of our home to pay off the debts. But since Mom's name is tied to some of the debts, she may potentially stand to lose her half of the equity in the house during the bankruptcy proceedings.

Essentially, we're pretty sure that it comes down to this: If she does not divorce him in the next 30 days, she may lose her credit AND her portion of the equity in the house.

She can either leave him destitute, or follow him to the poorhouse.

Fabulous.

But there's an unspoken thread in our conversations about this prospect - indeed, whenever we discuss Mom leaving Dad.

"What if he kills himself?"

I want to tell my mom to leave the relationship, but I'm afraid that doing so is literally killing my mentally unstable father.

What am I supposed to do?

More importantly, what is she supposed to do?

So Friday night, Mom was supposed to see a lawyer, but he cancelled at the last minute. As it turns out, this was a blessing in disguise - because her car broke down that night.

If Dad had been forced to come pick her up at a lawyer's office?

Well, that would have been bad.

As it was, she called him at work, but he didn't answer. Not because he had a meeting. Just because. (Keep in mind, she and Kyle are alone in a mall parking lot in the rain at night.)

An hour and a half later, she gets through. She tells him that the car is leaking green fluid and making mechanical grinding sounds.

Dad's take? "Well, don't drive it. It's broken. (silence) Are you at the mall? (grunt) (click)"

As Kyle puts it, "Thank you, Captain Obvious."

(Dad never really gave a crap about proper phone ettiquette.)

About an hour later, he shows up - angry that they didn't tell him where they were, even though he hung up before they could. He wouldn't let Mom help with the car - instead, he makes my brother Doug come to the lot after a double shift and help push the car about 50 yards uphill to the service center.

Just an example of another shining Dad moment.

Anyway, on Father's Day, he left at 5:30 AM without warning anyone that he was leaving. Mom had set up all of the presents for him and he totally ignored it. She had to call him at 5PM to ask where he was. His response? "I'm working. I won't be home until midnight."

To make things even weirder for my poor mom, Mass on Father's Day began late (35 minutes late, very odd). At the end of the mass, they explained to the parish what had happened:

"Monsigneur Paul [our parish's head honcho] was supposed to preside over this Mass, but he didn't show up at the church. We went to his room in the rectory to find the door locked. Eventually, one of the laypeople broke the door down - and we found the Monsigneur dead in his bedroom."

So, my parish at home lost their patriarch (not like I'm terribly attached to that parish, what with the whole scandal and all), my father's going bankrupt and is increasingly more unstable, my family might lose their house, my parents might get divorced, and I'm worried my dad might try to take his own life.

Happy fucking Father's Day.

(But otherwise I'm just peachy.)