My name is Niki Bossonis. I was living and working in California for 20 years, while my older brother had taken a different path and moved upstate New York, at the base of the Adirondack mountains.
He had been fighting cancer since 2014, and when he was diagnosed as being terminally ill with metastatic cancer in 2018, his wife left him (I guess she wasn’t serious about the “for better or for worse” part of the marriage vows). He was devastated emotionally, and frightened, because he needed help. I took an enormous risk to quit my secure job and rent out my California condo, to move across the country and help him.
I had been researching the Tiny Home and Sustainable Home movements for years, thinking this would be a way to retire on limited income. But the financial struggle of moving across country, facing a lower pay scale in the new location, and looming economic crisis caused by COVID, made me begin actively searching for land upstate New York and begin working on pricing and a solid plan for a small home without a mortgage.
Toward the end of my brother’s life, we were doing home hospice. The cancer had spread to his bones (ribs, spine, hips, collarbone, legs, and neck), and the pain was unimaginable; it hurt to breathe. We got to the point where I had to set an alarm every hour to administer pain medication, but it still wasn’t enough, and I was suffering the effects of exhaustion. The oncologist prescribed a Fentanyl patch for my brother, which was supposed to last for hours.
Well, my brother had a terrible reaction to Fentanyl. He became psychotic: not in a violent way, but he thought there were people in the house, he broke two faucets and a shower head because he was convinced that not enough water was coming out of them, and he had accidents with his urine and colostomy bags. A hospice nurse came and removed the patch, and told me it would take about 6 hours for the Fentanyl to wear off.
During this waiting period, he was still having mild hallucinations. I walked into the kitchen, and he was writing a note that said “Need one ticket to freed up world”. He looked up at me and said, “Oh, Hi! Maybe you can help me. I need to buy a ticket to the freed up world”.
I responded, “Isn’t this world free?”, and he said, “No, no, I need to go the other world, the freed up world. We are not free here. All we do is work for money like slaves. They promise us retirement and reward, but there is nothing except work.” We both started crying on the spot. He was right.
I hope I can find a way to do more to help people become free from the slavery of debt, and I am starting with this little blog. I hope you find some valuable information here, and that maybe you will share it with your friends and family.
I want to send everyone best wishes for a happy home, without worries of debt or how to survive. I wish everyone a freed up world to enjoy and live in peace.
