My Dear Cousin - A Poor Gift

20^th May 2021

 My Dear Cousin,

 

After (Yule) sold that car the family expected me to give up my third of a paid off home for the family offered me three gifts that were of no interest to me. This was not all at once but over a bit of time, perhaps a year or two, but I would accept none of them. I had learned what happens when I accept things from my family.

 

The first was a check from the old man for two hundred dollars. I was out of work when this happened. I was out of work, because the ordeal with the car had left me so depressed I could hardly get out of bed. What I honestly needed to do was contact the company I had been working for to be reassigned.

 

The check wouldn’t cover two days of the suffering I was feeling because of how (Yule) had harassed me over that car so I returned it to my father. He didn’t really react as far as I could see, but after I handed it back to him I just walked away.

 

My grandmother told me it was my fault, because I had given him the car back. I felt I had no choice, as no matter what I did they wouldn’t stop harassing me about that car. My family here in California tends to be the kind of people who will listen to nothing short of violence, and I didn’t want to get violent.

 

Two hundred dollars wouldn’t have replaced two days of lost work. It wouldn’t have covered the money for college I had been promised. It wouldn’t have even been the money the car that was supposed to have been a gift to me had been sold for. Keeping it would have been a deal with the devil, and them giving that to me as if it was supposed to mean anything was like having them spit in my face.

 

I never spoke to my grandmother again. I believe I spoke to (Yule) one more time. This was the first of the three gifts and it had told me once and for all that family was useless to me.

 

Best,

 

Richard Leland Neal