My father-in-law is 81. He worked in computers from the early fifties from when computers were the size of buildings and required lots of cooling equipment to remove all the heat. He was a math genius. He could fly a plane. He had an Indian motorcycle before he married my mother-in-law. He sold the motorcycle to get the money to buy her an engagement ring. His family lived in California. I was told that the family was a family of professional gamblers. He was one of eight kids.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
It was about 45 years ago or more that he cut his family of origin
\noff. My mother-in-law was in agreement with the decision not to have
\nanything to do with them. She is such a sweet person in so many ways.
\nShe has friends forever going back to her high school class. She stays
\nin touch with people. She is creative and funny and outgoing and
\ntalkative and nothing if not friendly. Yet she was in agreement that
\nher husband never have anything to do with his family again. Everyone.
\nBrothers, sisters, mother, father. <\/p>\n
He didn’t go to anyone’s funeral or wedding. He didn’t write to them
\nor hear from them. My husband is his only son. My husband had met some
\nof those relatives when he was a kid. He doesn’t have bad memories of
\nthem although the memories that he does have are odd. Like the one
\nwhere he remembers the uncle who would eat the entire wrapper off a
\ncandy bar. Or that one of them lived in a house with a dirt floor.<\/p>\n
It seemed that the relatives were always asking them for money and
\nthe relatives were gamblers. Since my own father was an addicted
\ngambler and I know what gamblers do with money, then I can imagine that
\nthe demands for money might have been endless. <\/p>\n
My father-in-law has worked hard in his life to get somewhere, to
\neducate himself, to be somebody who made a difference, to develop his
\ntalents. He has worked hard. When he was a young man with a family, it
\nmust have been infuriating to be expected to finance a gambling family
\nin California. <\/p>\n
He has never spoken of this estrangement with me. I only know the
\nlittle bit that my mother-in-law has told me. My father-in-law has gone
\nout of his way to help other people that he knows. He is a quiet
\nreserved man who is now suffering from a dementia. There will be no
\nreconciliation with any of his family. My husband no longer knows who
\nhis uncles, aunts, and cousins were although sometimes we are curious
\nto whom he is related and what happened to those people from whom his
\nfather is estranged.<\/p>\n
Then there is the estrangement in my son-in-law’s family. I know
\nless about this one. All I know is that his biological father cut
\nhimself off years ago from all of his children from his marriage to my
\nson-in-law’s mother. I don’t know how someone can do this to young kids
\nbut I know it happens all the time. I don’t know anything more about
\nthis estrangement. It is possible that someone may have been reconciled
\nin the years since I first heard about it. <\/p>\n
Snicks<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My father-in-law is 81. He worked in computers from the early fifties from when computers were the size of buildings and required lots of cooling equipment to remove all the heat. He was a math genius. He could fly a plane. He had an Indian motorcycle before he married my mother-in-law. He sold the motorcycle…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,69],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-for-parents","category-weblogs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/estrangements.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/estrangements.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/estrangements.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/estrangements.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/estrangements.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=309"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/estrangements.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/estrangements.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/estrangements.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/estrangements.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}