22 years ago my mother died. We hadn’t spoken in about 2 years; I’d given up on her. They’d moved out to Retired Nutjob, Arizona. Without telling me. I have virtually no keepsakes from pre-college; mainly one large, poor-quality picture of me with a choir at the White House with Tricky Dicky.

My father remarried a nice church-going Christian lady less than 2 years later. She was almost certainly fundigelical of some sort but I have no idea if she was a YEC (I probably didn’t believe such people existed at the time: I was very protected growing up.) I visited once around some holidays and ended up in the ER with a panic attack and premature atrial contractions (and I was a bicyclist and non-smoker at the time.) She was that nice to her husband’s only son.

My father turned into a dittohead. I didn’t know what that was at the time, but he had the at least the outline of the talking points down. Say “Clinton” and he would have paroxysms of indignation. I eventually figured it out because my all-night supermarket played Rush at high volume when they restocked after midnight. Obama, of course, was a socialist dictator out to ruin the country; I’m not sure if he was also Muslim and Nazi. I’m pretty sure he picked these things up second hand from golf buddies. Needless to say, this made conversation with my father rather difficult since he was pretty incurious.

Sorry to go leaving messes, Greg, but the “family” stuff makes me go non-linear and it’s a bad time. My father died late April; I just got a FedEx delivery of some papers from a stranger.

I think he’s my step-brother. I don’t know my step-siblings names.