Texts and E-mails

The above image was texted to my sister from my wife. It shows my mother resting and reading in Staten Island Hospital after she fell at her home on December 14, 2014. My mother had already been hospitalized for 3 days and neither of my sisters had made any effort to come and visit her but instead barked orders over the phone to me and my wife from Binghamton, NY and Florida respectively. My wife and I made arrangements for my mother to rehabilitate at Seaview Nursing Home, and only when my mother was being transferred there on the evening of December 22nd did my younger sister show up from Florida. The older of my sisters would still not put in an appearance (from Binghamton) for another 2 days. It should be noted that both of my sisters stayed at my mother's house for part of the time my mother was convalescing but Becky left for Florida around January 19th and Cecilia left for Binghamton around January 24th. Both of my sisters were fully aware that my mother was to be discharged on January 26th but her release was delayed for several more days due to a heavy snowfall.

In the above texts from my sister to my wife (January 8, 2015) we had just completed a treatment and discharge plan meeting with the Seaview staff. At that meeting my wife and I discovered that my sisters had influenced my mother not to include either me or my wife as a health care proxy (to the shock and dismay of the rehab staff) and instead listed themselves as her sole healthcare proxies even though neither of them resided any where near Staten Island. It didn't seem to matter to my sisters that my wife and I had been the sole caretakers of my mother since my father's passing in 2008. When we questioned my mother about this arrangement she said her daughters assured her that they would share any information they obtained with me, which never happened.

At this discharge plan meeting, the Seaview staff made it clear that my mother could not be left alone in her home but needed full time assistance to toilet and bathe herself and to assist her in getting into and out of her bed and wheelchair as well as help preparing meals and taking her medications. However they were able to rehabilitate her to the point that she could use a walker to walk up to forty feet as long as someone was present to assist her.

When this was discussed with my sisters they outright refused to allow me and my wife to secure in home care for my mother and ordered me to move in with my mother to provide her needed care even though they knew that this was ridiculous as I was working full time (and had a serious work related back injury since the summer of 2010 which seriously affected my ability to bend and lift). I was not eligible for retirement until the end of April 2015, at which point I became immediately eligible for social security disability benefits.

As my mother's discharge date approached, both my sisters left Staten Island and returned to Florida and Binghamton respectively. At this point my wife and I entered my mother's house and found it ransacked (see images page). It looked like a bomb went off. Cabinets and drawers were left open and clothing and objects were strewn all over my mother's bed and bedroom. The hallway was also obstructed.

I took some pictures and brought them to the social workers at Seaview and explained to them that we would need a few days to straighten up her living quarters and arrange for an in home health care aide. They agreed that my mother could stay as a self paid patient while these arrangements were made. Evidently my mother contacted my sisters to inform them and they told her not to believe us, that we were trying to permanently sign her into a nursing home and in addition it would be dangerous for her to have an in home aide, feeding on my mother's disorientation and fears, having been out of her familiar surroundings for over a month.

The following texts from my sister shed light on what my wife and I were dealing with during this trying time:

The above texts from my sister Cecilia (who was back in Binghamton, NY at the time) were received on the day my mother was scheduled to be discharged from Seaview.

Before we made actual hiring arrangements for my mother's health care aide we contacted our nieces:

The references to "Bess" have to do with the fact that my wife and I were aware that my niece Bess was unhappy in her present employment and we reached out to both Bess and her sister Adele to see if Bess would like to be my mother's (her grandmother's) health care aide (for which my mother would be willing to pay her since she was a registered nurse) since my sisters had terrorized my mother over the prospect of having a relative stranger as her health care aide. This was obviously unacceptable to my sister Cecilia who apparently relied on Bess to be her source of narcissistic supply and was unwilling to allow her daughter to leave the Binghamton area. Why my sister would bring her husband into this conversation appears to be another symptom of her
mental illness.

In spite of these vicious attacks from my sisters, and out of concern for my mother's welfare, my wife and I continued to have a helpful and cordial relationship with my sisters as shown below:

As shown in the above texts, my wife and I were always willing to help my sisters when needed, in spite of the fact that they made it virtually impossible (for me, my wife, and my sons) to see or speak to my mother after March 18, 2015 (my mother's birthday).

The date of the above texts (from my younger sister who was in Florida) was approximately one week before my niece Bess (in an intervention initiated by her siblings) left Staten Island to stay with her sister in Chicago. It is my understanding that Bess was near a nervous breakdown due to the incessant narcissistic abuse she was being subjected to by her mother while trying to also care for her invalid grandmother.

It appears that my sister Becky returned to Staten Island shortly after my niece's departure but only stayed until around November 15th.

Evidently all hell broke loose after Becky returned to Florida and my sister Cecilia was left alone with my mother because I received a call from my mother on November 18th (after not hearing from her for over seven months) in which my sister is heard screaming and cursing at my mother in the background.

My wife and I went over to my mother's house the following morning (November 19th) and discovered that my mother had been abandoned by my sister and had been sitting in a soiled diaper in her wheelchair at the kitchen table all night. Upon taking over the care of my mother we discovered that my sisters had been robbing my mother blind which included at a minimum stealing no less than $21,000.00 in cash withdrawals from her savings, checkings, and money market accounts (one of the depleted savings accounts was a joint account with me (her son) which was emptied of its entire $9,000.00 content), another $9,000.00 withdrawal from one of her checking accounts, and a $3,000.00 withdrawal from her IRA which had been established with money from my father's $100,000.00 life insurance policy. In addition all the EXXON stock certificates that were kept in a steel box in a kitchen cabinet were missing, in fact the whole steel box was gone. It is my information and belief that the value of these stocks were well in excess of $100,000.00. To add even more insult to this injury it appears my sister Becky had used her power of attorney to set my mother's Citibank credit card bills to be auto paid directly from her checking account into which she had her social security and teacher's pension directly deposited. My sister Cecilia was using my mother's credit card to rack up $3,000.00 to $4,000.00 in charges above and beyond the normal $1,000.00 or so my mother had normally been billed per month. That amounted to another $35 to $40,000.00 for purchases by my sister that had no relation to the care of my mother or the bills on her house over the 10 months she had supposedly been caring for my mother.

Upon discovering the above, and other abuse and endangerment I found I had no choice but to initiate a guardianship proceeding after being advised to do so by Adult Protective Services.