A Cycle, Continued...

...

Looking back, I don't know if I can find blame.

At fifteen Nancie ran away after her self induced 'rough childhood' of never listening, screaming and throwing tantrums, not trying in school, and always bringing home every stray cat and dog in the neighborhood. She took up hitchhiking and eventually made her way to California. There, she met a guy who probably killed people, and was introduced to the Hell's Angels gang. Throughout those years she had money sent to her to help her and her friends keep up their drug addictions, where she contracted Hepatitis C from sharing heroin needles.

At twenty seven she came to Connecticut where she moved back into twenty-seven Autumn Drive--with Art, a Hell's Angel gang member that no one was comfortable around. They were both treated like royalty: free food catered to Nancie's door, free utilities and full use of the washer and drier, (and most of the time Grandma did it for them.)

For several decades she drained them of what money they had in their retirement--forcing them to live more conservatively and with less amenities--to the tune of thousands and thousands of dollars, all for the continuation of Nancie's addictions, credit cards, car payments, and insurance bills. The whole time my grandparents turned a blind eye, blatantly denying the truth, or believing the next fairy tale of 'quitting drugs and starting a new life.' In and amongst those monthly, sometimes weekly bills, Nancie got my grandparents to pay for her wedding with Ken and her time at Tunxis Community College--hiding all this information from my mom--the one who started working at a young age, never asked for anything, and did what she could on her own, because she was the 'greedy' one after all.

In three years alone--the three before Pop Pop got sick--she took them for thirty thousand dollars. That reveal led to the discovery of more money lost, hundreds of thousands of dollars from both my grandparents and Steffie, a reverse mortgage, and the extent of the enabling that had been going on Nancie's entire life, all a vision of what a virus can turn into when its not only left alone, but allowed, fed, and encouraged to spread and reach its toxic seeds into every crevice of the family.

Nancie changed her last name to her birth name, Nancie McKenna, and like a virus that consumes all it can of its host, moved on. She washed her hands of the family that took her in, loved her, took care of her, leaving what it was and what it could have been in the ruins of what is: with no money, the bank owning the majority of the house, and my inability to buy it at the only chance I had. All because Nancie needed her fix.

When we tried to warn of its danger, Pop Pop denied it, Grandma lied about it, Aunt Steffie flared into bursts of anger and spite.The perfect cycle of a virus, a parasite, took its course, right under our very eyes and lowered guards.

Can someone blame a virus? It doesn't have the mental capacity to understand what it was made to do.

I can.