Dear Rebecca

Dear Rebecca,

Technically I am your actual Aunt. Think about it. I was briefly married (two years) to your father and seven years after divorcing, I married his brother. You are my actual niece!

I mention this this morning because I realize I have the actual God-given right to "advise" you. I qualify. Plus I am elderly now and all (or most) elderly folk desire to advise the young.

First I believe your father was a negative force in you and your brother's lives. How is that for an understatement?

I believe he broke your mother's heart and failed to accept consequences of his behavior. Obviously there is a part of me which finds your heart felt words verify my own experience.

However, my dear young lady, I am so thankful for running into you via social media. I admire you and your achievements amid a challenging childhood and youth. I have told you how you represent a victory amid several very sad stories. I dearly wish your late brother could have discovered a similar path. I regret you are "alone" in some ways.

I do celebrate your loving husband and adopted son. I can tell from your words that you are a loving unit and look out for one another.

However, my dear heart, here comes the advice. Actually, I am counting on your training as a Registered Nurse to understand what I am writing you.

You see, when it comes to your father, I carry a burden of guilt and a measure of regret. I ran from this reality for years on end. It is easier to run when you are raising five children , working outside the home and helping to run a small business for some twenty-six years.

My years of running are over. I have hours on end to review every train wreck and my role in things going off track.

You know the basic frame of my marriage to your father. I believe it will be a comfort to you if your learn more details.

Are you ready to learn some amazing facts. They amaze me and I personally lived them.

Key fact one. I met him after he walked my parent's social service agency saying his shoes had been stolen the night before in a "hobo" camp. That was the name for a homeless community in 1959.

My parents generally helped older men or women. People who through circumstance or addition had become "the walking wounded". A young man stood out and I had heard about him before we met on New Year's Day of 1959.

I was a student at the University of Washington and was spending the day with my parents. Bored I had wandered about the building looking for a hope chest containing childhood items.

Your father entered the room.

I married him twenty days later. Married by a Methodist minister and with my parent's approval.

Take a moment to take in those words. There is a commentary of a thousands words in those two simple sentences.

Insecurity. Immaturity. Yearning to be loved.

Looking back, I realize it was like two sailing ships meeting on a story sea. Except both ships have very tattered sails and zero safe harbor.

And neither had parents to advise or counsel. Yes, my parents were "there" but that is another long and complicated story. Your father had no advisor because he had "disappeared" from his father and step-mother's home months before.

Your father began disappearing at a very young age. There is an article in a Spokane paper about him disappearing as a boy of nine years of age. His father was concerned

"He may be looking for his mother as he recently visited her and she is no longer at that location".

His step-mother told me of his disappearing without a word some one hundred times.

When he joined The Marines he was discharged for "disappearing". The brig was no remedy.

You can tell why he told me he had "no family" when we met.

His family would have also mentioned to me that he often broke laws to survive when he wandered about the world. It is also a safe bet they would have mentioned that he served two years in a federal youth facility for placing pipe upon a train track to try to derail a passenger train.

The logic of trying to wreck a train? I learned he told two stories. One involved his wanting to go to jail for safety as a "drug cartel" was seeking him. The second story circled around his desire to be a hero and save passengers.

His father refused to sponsor an early release. His older sister and her husband stepped forward. He disappeared from their home weeks before I met him .

And, here is where my guilt arises. In my own (much less dramatic and obvious way) I was as confused and unstable as this troubled young man.

I now understand why. My childhood makes my failings perfectly logical. I have forgiven my mother and father because I had to in order to survive.

My guilt arises because your father put a great deal of honest effort into our marriage.

For example. We bout a house which had an unfinished interior. He put hours into putting in dry wall, plumbing and even had to wire the home to met state laws. He built lovely cedar wood kitchen cabinets.

When our daughter was born , she was a difficult birth and I had to stay in the hospital. He spent those days wall papering the bedroom in lovely flowers. We had a rocking cradle he had built of sturdy oak beside our bed.

He later cut the bedroom door in half so I could watch our toddler play.

The child was six months old when he disappeared. He knew I was probably pregnant with our second child. I told him on Friday and he disappeared on Monday.

Your father disappeared from our home on December 28th, 1960.

His mother's birthday.

I didn't help this troubled soul. Your mother obviously met a much more troubled soul. I am not destroyed by these words of truth.

His mother failed him due to an alcohol addiction. I knew this lady sober and married to another recovering alcoholic. She was a loving, artistic and lovely person.

Your half sister and brother are like you. They have grown into remarkable adults.

Rebecca, it is very important to me that you know moments of joy and the shelter of being loved. I didn't heal your father. I didn't know how.