Chapter 135

My fiance and I dressed up for our climbing gym’s Halloween party. We did a cute couple costume where we were both Nintendo Switch Joycons. She was a blue joycon and I was a red one. We climbed a lot of things in costume as per the event and had a blast doing it. 

Now, here’s the thing. The Halloween costume party wasn’t actually on Halloween. It was a few days before. This is common with Halloween parties at locations where kids roam. Our climbing gym was no exception. They likely timed it this way so that people didn’t have to choose between the Halloween party and going Trick-or-Treating.

After that event, soon it would be the actual Halloween. Unsurprisingly, my fiance and I were, once again, going to go rock climbing. It was just the thing we did. Because we go pretty much every other night, nothing felt special at all that it was Halloween.

However, just as we were about to leave for the gym, I got a call from mom. When I picked up the phone, she then told me the words that you never want to hear from a parent. 

“I’ve been scammed. It’s a large amount and it has been going on for a while.”

Wait. 

What?

WHAT?

What the f*ck do you mean? 

…

How would you have reacted? Would you be sympathetic? Would you be caring and cater to your parents when they screw up like this? Would you say it’s okay and that everything is going to be just fine? If you had a great relationship with them and that’s your first instinct, I envy you. For me though, in the 20 minutes after I heard her say those words, I must have yelled and screamed more than I have ever done in my life. 

WHAT THE F*CK?

A lot of thoughts started to scramble in my brain. What do you do with this situation? 

My first thought went to our most recent points of contention. Between all the political propaganda my mom had been sending me and all the times she said she wouldn’t listen to me about vaccines because “she just knew better”, I think we soured our relationship a lot. She had an ego about her political stance and I’ll just let her live with it. I never thought that it would lead into anything but here we are. 

This train of thought evolved into “Well, clearly letting my mom’s ego run free was not a good thing because it led to all of this. Her ego had led her to believe she knew everything when in truth, she really didn’t know much about anything. She didn’t even know enough to not get scammed.”

This led further into another thought which was something along the lines of “since this had been going on for a while, it means it was happening as my mom had been trying to persuade me to do things that she judged to be right. What kind of audacity does someone need to have to be scammed and then still try to give advice like their judgement is sound? How has she not been humbled by all of this”

Our family carries responsibility very seriously. So when my mom screws up like this. Sympathy is not what you would expect. Sure enough, my first reactions to this information were all hostile towards my mom. She had been careless and stupid. Both traits of which were unacceptable when you involve money. 

After these trains of thought. The next thought was “why didn’t she tell me sooner?”. This led into a feeling of betrayal. What does she mean “This has been going on for a while?”. How long? Furthermore, how many conversations did we have specifically about this issue? 

Every time we talked and she said everything was fine with her finances. So all of that were just lies? All of that was just bullsh*t? She let me believe that everything is okay while she gave away the keys to the kingdom? Why the lies? She was blunt when I was kid but now she wants to hold back the darkness of the world from me? Bullsh*t. I knew the answer to this one. It’s the same as the last train of thought. It was ego wasn’t it? In her hierarchy of needs, ego always comes first. She didn’t want to lose face as someone who had been scammed and because of this, she chose to not tell me about it for months on end. Her ego had made her so afraid of shame that she would rather go bankrupt than admit she made a mistake. 

The hostility against mom got worse. 

My fiance tried to play peacemaker a little bit but honestly, I was too upset to calm down. I handed the phone to her and told her to get some specifics because if I’m on the phone, the only thing I’ll be doing is yelling. 

My mom managed to tell us a bit more information after that. She said that she lost $50,000 CAD to a scam about bitcoin. The scammers told her that there was a sound investment and made it seem like she was exclusive to this offer. They also told her that they are only offering this to her because she was a high standing person in society and that she seemed to know the real world as it was. In truth, the scammers were using her ego against her. 

I still couldn’t wrap my head around it. We had wanted for nothing, why did she still need more money? Did she just think that she was this good of a person that someone selected her as the person to benefit from something like bitcoin? Did they make it sound like she could become an overnight super investor? What could she have possibly wanted with more money? She was in a state where she could have sold her house and just retired. How could she be so careless to give that much amount away? After all our family has been through? All those years in Canada? All the times we pinched pennies to get by? All the times she complained about poverty? She was so careful with money for so long and then she just goes around and spends money like it’s nothing because someone said she was special? Did her ego get so big it made her this stupid to reality? 

Hearing the number was painful. Especially since $50,000 is a lot of money. However, $50,000 was like half a year’s worth of my salary at the time and since I wasn’t alone and I had my fiance, we could save up that much if we really tried. Furthermore, my mom was still a lecturer at the university and earning money. I’m sure we can figure out a way to take care of the $50,000 CAD.

But as I was trying to math this out, my mom got quiet. Too quiet. My fiance put the phone on speaker. 

I said very sternly.

“Mom, what aren’t you telling me still?”

She said very softly.

“It wasn’t $50,000 CAD. It was $500,000 CAD.”

…

With these words, my mom became dead to me. There’s a point when you get so frustrated with someone you can’t even put things into words anymore. 

What the f*ck? No more yelling. I picked the phone back up and talked to my mom. 

“I’m coming over and you’re going to show me your bank statements.”

I didn’t trust a single word she said anymore. Too many lies and too little credible information was being communicated from my mom because of her shame. We can’t afford this right now. 

My fiance canceled our plans for the night and she drove us over to my moms. When we got there, as much as I wanted to be objective and just get to work, more yelling ensued.

I eventually got enough of a hold on myself to log on and look at her online banking page. My heart sank and my fingers went cold. 

On April 13th of 2023, while my fiance and I were on our first vacation, my mom made a $480,000 CAD transaction to an anonymous account.

Following that, she made over 47 smaller transactions of thousands each time. 

I tallied all the amounts and the total? It came out to be $678,000 CAD.

Forget about helping my future wife and myself with the wedding or with our first house purchase, my mom was now in debt and was about to go bankrupt. She went from having a nest egg to having nothing at all. 

Where do you even go from here? 

Amidst all the horrors I was experiencing, I knew that there was more dread ahead. For those who are mathematically inclined and realistic, you may be thinking what I am thinking. 

Where did my mom get the money?