Worst Holday Season Ever

Hello,

I am about to tell a story about the worst holiday season I have personally ever experienced. This story is completely real and nothing has been made up. The only thing that has been changed is the name of the individuals involved. It is very important to me to get this off my chest. No other series of events and personal actions have ever caused so much pain and heartache to me personally. Please comment and pass this story along.

First, I'll start off by telling a little bit about myself. I am a thirty years old disabled Army veteran, have a wife and two kids, and attend college full time. Before deciding to change my life in 2005, after the birth of my first child. I was hell on wheels. I ran the streets, did and sold drugs, and didn't care what people thought of me. Even though I had a problem with drugs I always worked, paid my bills, and never stole from anyone. This is important for a later part of the story. I had a few run ins with the law for minor drug possession and being at a drug house when it was raided. Take in mind this was over 7 years ago and happened in my hometown which is a small town in GA. This is all stuff from my past.

In August of 2005, I decided to change my life and become a positive member of society, someone my children could be proud of. I cleaned up my act and joined the Army as a Cavalry Scout. After serving five years in the military I was diagnosed with a medical condition that ended my military career. My wife was pregnant with our second child and we had to start over from scratch. The Army gave me $12,000 and the Post 9/11 GI Bill to help me start over. A few days after my discharge from the military (Feb. 2010) my daughter was born. Seeing how great it was to be at home with my daughter, I decided to take the $12,000 and use it to buy and sell things on Ebay, Craigslist, and word of mouth for profit. We started off selling a few cars, collectibles, and even a few storage unit auctions. This was more than enough to pay the bills and live a comfortable life.

I was doing sales and attending college, life was good. We managed to pay off most of our bills, buy a couple of nice cars, and save $10,000 in cash. The main reason we kept so much cash was because we were always looking for deals. Besides, this is how we were making our money. During this time we lived almost 160 miles from our hometown. We (wife and I) have family issues and decided it was better if we lived far enough from family that we didn't have to deal with all of their problems. We only visit around the holidays and special events. Now this is where things start to get crazy.

In October of this year my wife's brother was getting married to his childhood sweetheart. Her side of the family is a lot closer than mine and we have always gotten along pretty well. Her brother asked to barrow $200 to help pay for their wedding cake and some other items for the wedding. This was not an issue because he had always paid me back when borrowing money. The day before the wedding we arrive at my wife's mothers house to find out he was arrested for trespassing on his neighbors land. I never asked why, but his fiance had flown people from Hawaii and other places across the country to see this wedding. Tina decided to ask us if we would bond him out so they could have a wedding. After explaining, "our money is tied up in a car" and that we only had a few thousand until it was sold we decided to loan her the money for his bond. This was all based on her promise "I will pay you back in two weeks when I get paid again" said Tina. The wedding happened and we all had a good time.

Right after the reception we come home to find out our neighbor, who was a great friend of ours had to go to the hospital while we were gone. John was an older gentleman who always played with our daughter and watched after our apartment when we were out of town. He collapsed in his living room and called 911, while at the hospital they ran some test to find he had esophageal cancer and it had spread throughout his body. He didn't have a wife, kids, or close relatives and we were all he had. Even though we were having a financial dilemma ourselves we started paying for his chemotherapy and doctors visits.

Now, back to my wife's brother. Two weeks pass and we never here from Tina. My wife spends the days at home watching the kids and tried to call her for almost three weeks. We left message after message and never heard back from her. Finally a week before Thanksgiving she contacts Tina, my wife asked her if she had the money and what happened to paying us back in two weeks. Tina told her, "I noticed all of your calls and if I had your damn money I would have answered the phone, since I don't you'll just have to wait and if you don't get anything for a while it's not my problem" this hurt my wife really bad because we were only trying to help them. For the most part this completely ruined her relationship with her brother.

Thanksgiving weekend rolls around and we decided to go visit my family for the holidays this year. John was doing fairly well and went to his sisters house (whom he mended a relationship with after 20 years of arguing) that he made up with after finding out he was terminally ill. The day before Thanksgiving we sold the car we had for sale for $9,000. We took a small loss but needed the money because of John's chemotherapy and Christmas for the kids. Since the banks were closed for the holiday, we decided to take the cash to GA with us rather than leave it at home.

We arrive at my father's house to find that my step-brother West, cousin Jackie, and Grannie Tate are visiting for a few days. We all have dinner and a great time. That night my step-brother ask us to take him to the bar while we are out to dinner. We drop him off, eat dinner, and come back to pick him up. We went to sleep and expected to wake up the next morning and go back home. TO BE CONTINUED......