Irrelevance

Wealth

He was drinking again.

I suppose I should have been worried about this since he was my brother but I couldn't bring myself to do so. After all, sitting down with our pretentious family for dinner couldn't possibly be bearable without a little bit of substance intake.

Plus, Quinton always seemed to be far more amusing tipsy than he ever was sober.

Honestly, there was no stopping him.

It started out as these dinners usually do.

Aunt Seasamore and uncle Darnes arrived shortly after 7pm, bearing a dessert with a name I couldn't pronounce, much less fathom to spell without reaching deep into the seven languages I had been forced to learn in school.

Mom and dad got up to greet them and I followed along smoothly but Quinton passed them a quick glance and then went back to gulping down his wine like water, if not a little more urgently than before.

Expensive food adorned the table, along with the cutlery my father had received from the Duke of Cambridge a few years back. It looked like something out a higher class dining magazine but the perpetually paranoid look, that everyone had greeted each other with, had ruined the picture perfect Kodak moment.

We all sat down at our respective seats, mother and father at either end of the table, me next to aunt Seasamore on the one side of the table and on the other side; Quinton next to uncle Darnes who cast a bitter sneer at the sight of him openly drinking right out the wine bottle.

Classy man my brother is.

Mother tried in vain to get Quinton to stop but he was too far gone to be his usual prestigious, media-ready self.

"Don't tell me what to do mother," Quinton replied at her fifth request for him to put down the bottle. A severe glaring competition commenced between the two of them, filling the room with more tension than there already was, which was saying a lot.

Father cleared his throat then got up from his seat, diverting the attention to him(the way he always seemed to like it).

"Let's say grace," he announced smiling the plasticated smile that made him do photogenic to the press but so fake to his own family, "dear heavenly father we wish to thank you for this decadent meal before us and we are so grateful-"

"Oh bullshit!" Quinton exploded stabbing his fork into his steak, "I can't take this anymore!"

"QUINTON!" mother scolded with a wide eyed, disbelieved look on her face - as if this was the first time he'd pulled something like this. He paid her no mind and stood up to fully emphasise his point.

"You're all a bunch of greedy bastards," he said squinting drunkenly at very appalled aunt Seasamore, "don't gimme that look, you know it's true that while you're all sitting here eating dinner like a happy bloody family, the people around you are secretly hoping your food's poisoned so that you'll die and they'll inherit the profits"

"Quinton Elias Lilature! Sit down or so-help-me I'll-"

"You'll what? Throw another wad of cash at me and buy my silence?"

Mom picked up her salad fork and, with a familiar crazed look in her eyes, she thrust it at Quinton only for him to duck. The fork sailed past him, only to hit uncle Darnes in the head. Uncle Darnes shot up from his seat, seething and glaring at mother with an intense hatred (he never had liked mother very much anyway), and grabbed his steak knife. Aunt Seasamore gasped, appalled at her husbands lack of restraint, and tried to hit the knife from his hand only for it to end up flinging at fathers recently plasticated nose.

It didn't take much longer for the infamous Lilature family dinner warfare to spiral out of control. Soon enough, cutlery worth millions and the rarest variety of gourmet food were being tossed around. Messing the walls, breaking the furniture, and in the midst of it all, knocking grandmother's urn off the burning furnace and onto what seemed to be a piece of medium rare salmon.

There were shouts of profane words, clutter and ultimately mayhem erupting from all around and I quickly ducked under the table.

Such a precious thing family is;

It is one of the priceless things in life.

Yet, how bitter family but sweet the wealth among the Lilature's. I mean, perhaps, somewhere deep, deep, deep, deep, deep down they actually love each other but I'm not going to lie to you because the reality of it is this:

there is very little in this world that money cannot buy and yet so much that it can destroy...

family

love

happiness

sanity...

All of it comes at a great cost but is wealth really it or is all that you give up along the way, to reach a standard of empty wealth?