Blog Challenge «Martin Martin

I hope you are aware, Granddad, that you are missed. My dad, who was 10 years old when you left, still hasn’t recovered. That’s 77 years he has been in just about the worst emotional pain imaginable. He has been spreading that pain around to everyone in his life through his alcoholism and abusive nature. It was really difficult for my grandmother to make a living for herself and four children in the 1930s. You’re leaving really destroyed that family.

I rarely saw my two aunts and one uncle. Now my one remaining aunt is in a nursing home with dementia and my dad, now 87, is staying alive with Spiritual masking tape and bubble gum holding him to this life.

I think you would be proud of your children if you had hung around longer. Nobody went to jail. My aunt Sara, your middle daughter whom I knew, ran an emergency vehicle (fire trucks and ambulances) sales company with her husband. They were very strict with their children and drank a lot. Even though money isn’t discussed in the family, as I’m sure you are aware, my parents say my aunt was a millionaire when her husband died recently.

Her son got into drugs after he was (honorably) discharged from the army. Cocaine not holding him down too very much or for too long, he got a Law degree, practiced tax law for about 30 years before succumbing to the effects of drug abuse. He went to jail a couple of times for mouthing off to the judge during his clients trials, but nothing major.

One of my cousins, my Aunt Sara’s daughter, married an abusive man and I heard he killed her. This happened in north Georgia, almost a thousand miles from where I live, and I never heard any details or if this abusive man went to jail or not.

My other female cousin is working for a tobacco company or maybe a gun manufacturer. Making something that kills people. As I said, I am not really in touch with that part of the family.

My dad was thrown onto the street after his mom died. He survived by dropping out of high school and getting a job as a courier. There were no social safety nets in the 1930s. He was living on the streets and in really bad places until he met and was taken in by a man who raised him until he finished high school. Fortunately he was too young to be drafted until the very end of the war. He was in the Navy training to be the radio operator on an airplane when we dropped the atomic bomb on Japan. This was good for my dad and I, as he and I are still alive, because he missed out on combat. This was not good for the people of Japan. This part of the story is a whole different blog post.

My dad got an engineering degree, worked on the Saturn 5 rocket that sent men to the moon. He has been married to the same woman, my mom, for 64 years. How and why she survived his bouts of alcoholism, to forget you leaving him, I’ll never understand.

Between my sister and I we have 5 beautiful grandchildren. They would be your great, great grandchildren.
Do you see what you have missed by leaving your family so early? There is so much anger, beauty and Love in life and you have missed it all because you left.