The Credit Crisis….

Where to start? Where to start?

There are many draft posts here on my good old Unsigned Masterpiece WordPress site.   Some about my son.  Some about my father, who died on January 7th.  Some about my father and my son who could be twins.   Some about how my father never really got to know my son because – well – because of all the stupid reasons that existed when my son was born.

During the month after my father died, every day mail arrived telling us that he was in debt to an extent none of us could have imagined.  As much as you are thinking; it is more than that.  Dealing with this crisis, adding up accounts, consulting with lawyers, wiped out the main event, the death of my father.  No one, not even my mother, (She swears and I believe her.) knew the extent of the problem.

How my father lived with this secret I do not know.  He was not well but I think in the end it killed him.  Time was running out.  Credit card companies who let him run up way more debt than a man of his income should ever have been permitted to run up were starting to cut him off.

January and most of February I wondered at times if I was going to have a stroke, a heart attack or a nervous breakdown.  I phoned my doctor’s office and said I either needed drugs or a long talk with her. (Regular readers, if there are any of you left out there, will know that she is a very wise woman.)

My family doctor is the one who would say “That’s abandonment talking,” when I told her things my son was writing to me in his emails.  And still not one to mince words, when I told her about my dad, she said, “That’s quite a betrayal.”  And that’s exactly how it felt.

She didn’t give me drugs of course.  I didn’t ask for them and even if I had she would have said no because she is a wise woman.  But she did tell me you need to grieve and that is where I am running into trouble.  I feel nothing. Angry.  I don’t know.  I see a picture of my father and I think – whatever.  How could you do this?

I said to my doctor that I thought pride kept my father from telling anyone what was going on.  She said, “It wasn’t pride, it was shame.”

Shame – that’s a familiar word.

Everyone else in my immediate family wants it to be a family secret.  After he died, we got many letters from cousins or kids I grew up with, even one from my son’s father, saying what a great and good guy he was.   The cousins all said he was their favourite uncle.  Everyone mentioned his great sense of humour.  He did have a wonderful sense of humour.  It’s true.  They all thought he was a hell of a great guy.   His best friend since the age of 12 was in tears.

But having been the subject of the last BIG FAMILY SECRET, I have no desire to go down that road again. So they are silent but I am talking.  Talking to my close friends about my own little version of the credit crunch, the greed of credit card companies who, realizing they had a money maker, encouraged him to get ever deeper into debt.

In his desk drawer, I found letter after letter from one credit card company saying “Now every day can be payday.” and enclosing cheques that would allow him to increase his debt to them, by paying off someone else.  At the end, I think he was borrowing from one to pay another and the day before he died it  was all starting to collapse around him like a house of cards.  He was not a big spender.  I think he just got into some trouble and then the interest and the silence did him in.

I feel sick to my stomach when I see a credit card bill now.  And I pay mine off every month!

I overreact in the bank when the very nice and friendly teller suggests I could put overdraft protect on my chequing  account “for free.”

“No,” I say in a voice that is way too loud.  “I don’t want that.”  And then I tell her about about my father.

My doctor says this is happening all over the place.  So many people, so over extended, owing money they cannot possibly pay back.

At some point you have to wonder who is responsible.  We all are responsible for our own lives but I think the people who held out the equivalent of a drink to an alcoholic in the form of every increasing credit limits unsupported by income deserve to take a large part of the blame.