Doing What They Say and Living To Die Instead of To Live

I knew an old man who worked hard all his life at a Brewery. He thought he was safe in his retirement years because they had a pension at his company. 

I thought it was this one but I can't find anything about the workers getting screwed out of their pensions:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballantine_Brewery

Decline

In the 1960s the company went into decline. The breweries were closed and the brands acquired by the Falstaff Brewing Corporation under whose stewardship the beers remained faithful for a time to their original flavor profile. By the late 1980s, though, Ballantine Ales were produced by a number of different outsourced companies.

[edit]

The brand today

Since 2005, the Ballantine Ale brand has been owned and marketed by the Pabst Brewing Company, which in turn outsources the brewing to the Miller Brewing Company.

Because Ballantine is now widely sold in 40-ounce bottles, it is often lumped together with Olde English 800 and other malt liquors in the public mind.[2]

At its peak, Ballantine was the 4th largest brewer in the United States.

I think it was Ballentine, but I could be wrong.

Anyway, this man had a wife and a house and three kids, raised them religious, Catholic school, baptised, the whole nine yards: boy, girl, boy. The kids got married and had their own families and moved away. The man and his wife had to sell the house because none of the kids wanted it and the couple couldn’t take care of it any more. 

Ideally, I guess you hope that you get old and one of the kids moves back with you, and helps you out because you sacrificed your life for them. As soon as they were born it was about them, not you anymore. 

So, they sell the house, which was mostly bought in hopes to pass on to the kids they love so much. They move into a shit-hole condo they don’t even own and have to walk up too many stairs, and then they move out of that place after a couple years to an even worse ugly up too many stairs apartment with a pay washer-dryer in the creepy basement.

The one son moves back on with them, only not to help. It’s because his wife caught him doing drugs and kicked his ass out. This pretty much kills the mom, who is recovering from cancer.

The dad is now alone and at a loss. Up until this point he was pretty much an engaged and creative guy, but he’s been going downhill with each move and now he’s had it.

He’s bitter, he’s lonely, he’s wandering the apartment saying “keep it down” to the son watching TV in the living room. Just before the three kids stick him in a nursing home to die, he says this, “It’s not worth it.”

The youngest, who came as a surprise about ten years after the second, said that when he was a little kid his mom used to sit at the kitchen table at night after everybody went to bed. She would drink a beer and cry. I suspect it wasn’t worth it to her, either, but I don’t know why she was crying. She died before I thought to ask her.