Page 158 - Too Much and Never Enough - Mary L. Trump

‘He said, she said.’ Besides, your grandfather’s estate is only worth around thirty million dollars.” That was only a tenth of the estimate Robert had given the New York Times in 1999, which itself would turn out to be only 25 percent of the estate’s actual value.
Fred no doubt believed that my dad had been given the same tools, the same advantages, and the same opportunities as Donald had. If Freddy had thrown them all away, that wasn’t his father’s fault. If, despite them, my dad had continued to be a terrible provider, my brother and I should consider ourselves lucky that there were trust funds our father couldn’t squander when he was alive. Whatever happened to us after that had nothing to do with Fred Trump. He had done his part; we had no right to expect more.
While the lawsuits were still in progress, I received word that, after a brief illness, Gam had died on August 7, 2000, at Long Island Jewish Medical Center, just as my grandfather had. She was eighty-eight.
If I had known she was sick, I think I would have tried to see her, but the fact that she hadn’t asked to see me clarified just how easy it had been for us to let each other go. We had never spoken after that last phone conversation, just as I had not spoken again to Robert, Donald, Maryanne, or Elizabeth. It had never occurred to me to try.
Fritz and I decided to attend Gam’s funeral, but, knowing we were unwelcome, we stood in one of the overflow rooms at the back of Marble Collegiate Church. Along with a couple of Donald’s security guards, we watched the service on a closed-circuit monitor.
The eulogies were remarkable only for what was not said. There was a lot of speculation about my grandparents’ reunion in Heaven, but my father, their oldest son, who had been dead for almost twenty-seven years, was not mentioned at all. He didn’t even appear in my grandmother’s obituary.
I received a copy of Gam’s will a few weeks after she died. It was a carbon copy of my grandfather’s, with one exception: my brother and I had been removed from the section outlining the bequests for her grandchildren. My father and his entire line had now been effectively erased.