It’s sad for a child to lose a parent at a young age, but what’s even sadder is when the children have to suffer because there is barely enough money to pay the bills.
In today’s story, we hear a story like this, but it gets even worse.
The grandfather, who claimed he was helping, was actually hurting the family all along.
You’ll be glad to know his grandchild eventually gets revenge.
Let’s see how the story plays out…
When I was a tiny kid, my father was my best friend.
He worked multiple jobs to support my family, all while powering his way through law school.
He even built a couple of small businesses from the ground up with a couple of his friends.
All while doing this, he managed to be the best dad ever, spending as much time as he could with my mother, myself and my baby siblings.
His dad got cancer.
One day, we found out that he had stage 4 stomach cancer, the kind that you don’t recover from.
My mother and I stayed by his side all the way til it was all over.
The last memory I have of my father was when he was completely immobile, practically a vegetable at this point with tubes going in and out of his body and me just praying that he’d still be able to remember who I was.
All the guy could do was smile at me just to let me know he still recognized his son even if the doctors told us most of his memories would be gone.
Eventually, he fell into a coma for some days before waking up to say goodbye to my mother who was by his side when he died.
She was a housewife so we really didn’t have much to go on after his death.
His grandfather only seemed to care about his dead son’s achievements.
Enter, my grandfather.
He was one of those self-centered boomer types who makes everything about himself.
After my father passed, he’d use the newspaper obituary to boast about his son’s grades and achievements which I realized seemed to be the only thing my dad was to him.
Just in case you were wondering, yes, we are Asian.
The grandfather offered to help.
My mother was grieving and trying to find a way to make ends meet and my grandfather graciously offered to help her control my father’s two businesses to help support us.
My mother agreed because she didn’t have any experience.
While we grew up, the two businesses didn’t provide much for us, likely because my father was one of the big reasons they were thriving.
Mom was in and out of multiple jobs just to keep us floating.
The grandfather offered to help pay for college too.
My grandfather offered to help put me and my siblings through school.
I managed to score some scholarships with some good schools growing up so thankfully he didn’t have to do as much for me, but we were really glad that he helped out with my siblings.
After I made it out of school, I found out that my family was broke and my two siblings were still making their way through medical school.
The grandparents cut them off.
My sister even offered to stop and just get a job, but I told her to keep going because she was doing so well and that she deserved to graduate.
My grandparents had cut us off because they didn’t approve of the directions my siblings took in life, especially my sister who was, for them, too female to have a career in medicine (my grandmother is a bit of a misogynist).
“Why are you wasting your time and money becoming a doctor? You’re just going to have children and quit.”
The grandfather was stealing their money!
I was working as a high school teacher when I was contacted by one of my dad’s old business partners for one of his companies.
After I asked him about how the company was doing, he told me that my grandfather who was still in control of my father’s shares was siphoning money from the company for himself and he was earning way more than he was giving me and my siblings for our education.
So all our lives he’d been making us feel indebted to him for money that was supposed to be ours to begin with and he lied to us by telling us that dad’s companies weren’t making any money for us at all.
We also realized that when he cut us off, he was cutting us off from our own money forcing my siblings to drop out and give up careers that they’d been working their whole lives for.
It gets even worse…
What’s worse is that this was our father’s money and we know that he’d wanted it to help us provide for our futures even after he died, and here comes his horrible father basically ruining his legacy for his own enrichment.
I even found out that he used his position to take possession of the company’s office space and forced them to set up shop in a smaller cheaper office.
While renting the original space out under his own name to the company’s competitors to make money from them too… all while I had to work multiple jobs to help my mother and siblings pay the bills.
Cue revenge.
He took back control of his father’s companies.
My grandfather’s biggest weakness has always been his pride.
In fact, I suspect that he wanted us to think he was helping support us out of his own pocket because he wanted everyone to think he was some kind of hero when in reality he was financially choking us.
I recognized that no matter what my grandfather said, my siblings, my mother and I were legally the owners of my father’s company shares.
So after having a statement signed by the three of them, I approached all the board of directors sans my grandfather and let them know that I was now that sole representative of my late dad’s estate.
My grandfather also made himself chairman of the board (according to the company records, he did no work for the company at all so the position was just a name that allowed him to receive money).
So I convinced them that since he was only chairman as representative of my father’s estate, that made me the chairman (I did not intend to keep the position because I did not have the experience for it.).
Then I contacted other members of my extended family about my grandfather’s unethical practices with the company’s office space.
He was eventually pressured by them into evicting the company’s main competitor from their office space.
Serves them right for conniving with my grandfather to take the company’s old office space.
He surprised his grandfather at the next board meeting.
At the next board meeting, I prepared for the moment I’d been waiting my entire life for.
When he entered the conference room, to preside over the meeting as the chairman, he found his chair facing away from the table with all the board members already seated at the table.
Like a bond villain, I spun the chair around to reveal to him that I’d been the one sitting there the entire meeting.
I told him that the company and my family no longer needed him and that I’d be taking control over representation of my father’s estate.
“Do you know that I’m the one who put him and his siblings through school?” He said in shock.
I only went “No. Dad did.”
Things worked out the way he intended.
The look of sheer embarrassment on his face was perfect.
I’ve never seen him look defeated my entire life until that moment and this sort of satisfaction could not be achieved by simply ratting him out.
I stepped down from the chairman position and took a job in the company’s treasury department as a bookkeeper with a meager salary.
But at least now any profit-sharing or dividends that the company released would go where my father wanted it to go…
And finally, one of the first decisions I got to make as a board member before stepping down was to give my mother a permanent job that she deserved.
It didn’t work out so well for the grandfather.
My grandfather is now jobless.
He spends all his time at home and because he spent his life being selfish and self-centered, he has no friends.
All he had going for him was being able to powertrip over other people and boasting about his assets and achievements.
Even my grandmother has had it with him and the two don’t even sleep in the same room anymore.
I hope he lives the rest of his short life regretting that he didn’t live his life with more compassion and humility.
That grandfather is horrible! Imagine stealing from your own grandkids!
Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story…
These are good questions…
Knowing your limits is important.
This reader appreciated learning about another culture.
It really was more emotional than “Up.”
His dad would be proud.
The whole family should cut contact with the grandfather.
What a complete jerk.
If you thought that was an interesting story, check this one out about a man who created a points system for his inheritance, and a family friend ends up getting almost all of it.
