The Tragic Years

“The Tragic Years, that’s what I call ‘em,” the elderly man told Ross, his adult grandson. The old man kept slowly shaking his head back and forth. His face became flushed. “Tragic. Terrible. Affected my entire life, right up to this day. Terrible.” 

“Sorry, Grandad, I thought seeing this old scrapbook would bring you some fond memories. Is this a picture of you?”

“Yes. That’s at my Senior Prom.”

“Do you want to tell me about it?”

“What’s to tell? That was my high school girlfriend. Tragic. She became my fiancée. Tragic years. Not when we were engaged, but tragic after we broke up. Partly me, partly her, partly Gramma, your paternal grandmother and my ex-wife, partly fate. Yes, fate.” Grandad dropped his head in sad, resigned remembrance. “Whatever. We can’t change the past. Tragic. A Greek Tragedy. Do you know what that is?”

“I think so. That’s a play in which somebody suffers a disaster due to a combination of a personal failing and circumstances he can’t control.”

Grandad nodded in agreement. “Exactly.”

“I want to know about your life, Grandad. Will you tell me?”

The old man lifted the scrapbook and pointed to the prom picture. “Sure.” He released a deep breath. “It starts in high school with the story of two teenagers in love. These two. A love I expected to last a lifetime.”

Grandad took another deep breath. He looked to the ceiling, closed his eyes, and was lost in memory. “I was 17. Her name was Michelle. She was 16, seven months younger. Beautiful. When she turned her face to the sun, the shadows fell behind her. Oh she tempted my young body. But more importantly, she won my soul. I missed her in the time it took to blink. Anytime I saw her face light up, I was the one who put the love in her gorgeous eyes.”

Grandad’s eyes became wet, wistful. He was reliving the time. “Yet, after three years as a couple, we were engaged for a year and a half, she started to phase me out. I didn’t know why. But, I decided the loss of her love was too painful to bear — especially in the nonchalant manner she treated me. School and dance became number one in her life, instead of me. I asked for time apart. That was a mistake. A tragic mistake. I was barely 22.”

Again, he slowly swung his head from side to side.

“I thought I needed to figure out what to do. I should have figured it out without saying anything to her. But I didn’t. I broke up with her. Big mistake. Tragic. It was my personal failing in this Greek Tragedy. The beginning of the end. I didn’t know it then, but it was it was the prelude to the Tragic Years.” 

His eyes glassed over. A tear slid slowly down his face from each eye. “No. That’s when they began. In a short time, I figured out that I loved her so much I preferred what little attention she gave me to none. I couldn’t live without her. I tried to reunite. She didn’t answer my calls or notes. I even ran a display ad in the college newspaper saying I loved her. She saw the ad. She ignored me. The silent treatment. To call me was such a little thing for her to do. She didn’t even care enough to do that. Turns out that it was her personal failing in our Greek Tragedy.”

Grandad’s hands gripped the coffee cup. “Two months later, I figured there was no hope. That’s when I made another decision. I loved her above everything else in my life. The pain was too much to endure such a loss ever again. I decided never to fall in love again, and I held to that resolve for well over a decade. A terrible choice on my part because it infected my outlook on life and women.”

Grandad tapped the prom photo. “In the meantime, I married Gramma. Love was not part of the equation. She didn’t love me, and I didn’t love her. It was about philosophy that we agreed, not love. At one point, her parents disowned her, and cut her off with no money and no explanation. She called her grandfather. He hung up. She would have starved but for me. I had no money, and we lived on popcorn for a week. We were desperate, and called her biological father. Despite having been cut off from her for years due to a custody fight with her mother, and her subsequently being adopted by her mother’s new husband, the biological dad wired money within the hour without any questions. The silent treatment runs in her family. She used it on me, and still does. So does your Aunt Angela and your dad.

“The government tried to draft me, then in 1963, changed the pecking order, and married men were put at the bottom of the list. So, mostly to avoid the military draft, we married. On our wedding day, my mother didn’t think I heard her when she whispered to my stepfather that the marriage wouldn’t last and I should have married Michelle. She was right, but Michelle was gone. I had my chance and blew it. Tragic. 

“Gramma and I had your Aunt Angela and your dad. That was my failed attempt to lead a normal, if loveless, life. I loved our children, but not the mother.”

Grandad raised his head as if looking at the stars. “Yes, Michelle. Our futures went on different paths, and it brings me great sadness. But that we met and loved for those three wonderful years brings great warm joy to my heart.”

He cleared his throat, sipped some coffee and just sat quietly as if it was the end of the tale.

Ross had a puzzled face. “That can’t be all to the story. Everyone suffers a broken heart. Why did that start the Tragic Years?”

“True, Ross, everyone has suffered a broken heart — usually several. As they say, a common tale, but true. Michelle and I were soulmates and destined to be together for life. I’ve had only two soulmates in my life. She was the first. We lasted three years. I didn’t find another soulmate until thirteen years later. Probably because I didn’t trust women. But, eventually, I did. My current wife, your stepgrandmother. We’ve been married almost half a century. In between, I lived the Tragic Years, and those Tragic Years negatively affected the rest of my life.”

“Getting back to the story with Gramma...”

“Yes. I don’t want to prejudice you against her. But I will tell you she was the cause of the Tragic Years, and the adverse effects since.”

“Okay,” said Ross. “Can you give me a general idea? No specifics. I’m interested in your life now, not hers. I can ask her.”

“I suppose I can say some general things that you may have noticed and offer some advice. As a youngster, my stepfather told me that if I wanted to see what the girl would be later, I would look at the mother. I should have listened. Michelle’s mother was pretty and loving. I could never stand Gramma’s mother. She was ugly, frumpy, complaining, and generally a miserable creature to be around. Worst of all, she was manipulating. She’d do anything she needed to do to get whatever she wanted. No holds barred.”

“That sounds kind of like Machiavellian.”

The old man smiled as he lifted an eyebrow. “That term came into use after these events. Back then we just said it was a manipulating person who was indifferent to morality, lacked empathy, and had an extreme strategic focus on self-interest. Super narcissism. There’s even a mental test for it today. The Mach test. People who score high on the “High Mach” scale are more likely to be deceitful, manipulating, cynical, and unemotional. But if their targets expect emotion, then the High Machs play into those emotions. They are quite talented.”

Ross pulled his chair closer. “It sounds like you’ve done some studying on this.”

“Unfortunately, yes. Study and experience. Our personalities were not compatible, but I wanted to save the marriage for the sake of the children. Gramma and I were in marriage counseling with a nationally famous therapist for quite a while.” 

“Finally, after a particularly difficult group session, he took me aside. He said Gramma had what we now call Machiavellianism, she would never change, and further counseling would be a waste of money. I had either to live with her as-is, or leave. I left, and we got divorced. As is typical with such a personality, she vengefully filed the divorce papers on our wedding anniversary. The therapist was right, there was no possible road to happiness with her. Tragic.”

Granddad let out a long breath and rested. His expressions and voice told Ross it was unpleasant to review this part of his history. 

“I often pined that I didn’t marry Michelle when I had the chance. If I had, I would have never suffered the Tragic Years. On the other hand, you would not have been born because your dad would not have been born. I guess, there are plenty of ‘if onlys’ to go around.”

Granddad sighed. “You know, if we did not have your dad and your aunt, that would have been the end of the relationship I had with Gramma. But, we did have them. I didn’t want to be absent, I wanted to be an involved father. So, I had to deal with Gramma for another two decades. That was not easy. When I would return from meeting with Gramma, my personality was altered for a day or two.”

“In what way?”

“The ladies all told me the same thing, and I could feel it. I was cold, introverted, beaten down, revealing the exhaustion from dealing with Gramma that weighed me down like an anchor. We’d sit with a glass of wine as Gramma’s words, sharp and nasty as shards of glass, reverberated through the corridors of my mind. Yes, those encounters left scars that refuse to heal.”

Grandad almost whispered. “Each accusation, each venomous barb, carved fissures in my spirit. There could be no legal battle, the courts were rigged for the woman no matter how bad she was. Each meeting was a dispute, and drained what little strength I had. It wasn’t a mother’s wrath. It was just plain, naked vindictiveness.”

Ross could see Grandad’s chest tighten as he withheld unshed tears, his voice silenced by the magnitude of his grief. “Yes, it was impossible to keep those emotions from the gentle and delightful women I dated.”

The old man sighed again. “On a longer term, what had happened with Michelle and then Gramma made me not trust women, any woman, to have a serious and caring relationship.”

“Whoa, Grandad, I’m sorry I brought the scrapbook to you. Here I was thinking this would be fun to look at. I didn’t mean to trigger these bad memories.”

“It’s okay. I’ll get over it. People with a Machiavellian personality are usually the offspring of parents who have it. Oddly, females pass it on more than males. Gramma got it from her mother. I think they both must have used the book Raising the Perfect Child Through Guilt and Manipulation as a manual. In any event, my daughter, your Aunt Angela, dutifully followed in the footsteps of her mother. Three generations of Machiavellianism.”

Grandad paused to let that sink in. 

“Ross, I see the moving force between you and your wife as the importance you give to each other. Like Saint Exupery’s Little Prince and his rose. Do you know the story?”

“No, I don’t.”

“The Little Prince looked out at a field of red roses. They all looked alike. He selected one. When he did, the Prince said, even if all the roses in the world are the same, when you select one to be your own, that act makes the selected rose special. The same is true with people. That’s something Gramma and I never had. We were never special to each other. Tragic, but not fate.”

“And not a Greek Tragedy.”

“True.” Grandad closed the scrapbook. “Thank you. While the bad memories outnumbered the good in this scrapbook, there are some good memories here.”

“Grandad, if you don’t want to answer this, it’s okay. What ever happened to Michelle?”

“It was fate again. She got married for a short time and divorced. When she was still in the divorce process, and I was single, we arranged for a date to happen later. We lived in different cities. That’s when fate struck. Between when the date was arranged and the actual day, I had fallen in love with a woman who loved me back and did not have all the baggage Michelle carried. If we had the date sooner, we’d still be a couple today. Tragic.”

Nodding, he continued, “Yes, tragic. If I had not formed a relationship with your stepgrandmother, I’m sure Michelle and I would have cleaned out the baggage and married. That would have been a fairy tale ending instead of a Greek Tragedy. Timing. Fate. About eight months after that, she married and has been married ever since.”

Grandad handed back the scrapbook, his face pensive, sad. “We romanticize the past. But nostalgia ends when reality sets in.”