Grandpa

I was a little kid when my Grandpa died.

He was 49 years old and he died of lung cancer. I'm 13 years older than he was when he died and a year ago I was diagnosed with leukemia. I used to always think (and still do...) smoking was a disgusting habit, I wouldn't touch a cigarette as a kid, even it it was just to pass from my Mom to my Dad (also lifelong smokers) and as I got a bit older, I would take a bit of comfort in believing that I'd never get lung cancer like Grandpa had, because I'd never smoked.

Color me surprised when I ended up with some other kind of cancer instead.

At the beginning of this year, after too many years of listening to too many excuses, and me pretending that there was still hope, my (ex) wife decided to leave and take my teenaged Daughter with her. At the time of this post, I have no idea where they are. Before she bailed, she made two fraudulent claims to get emergency protection orders against me.

I suppose she figured if she couldn't be the one with the excuses, then nobody could.

My divorce is ongoing, and I'm now battling against a very lazy lawyer who has already been paid for the divorce, and is now dragging his feet to get it finalized.

It hasn't been an easy year, but I'm still here. It's been difficult, but I'm still here.

So what does this have to do with my Grandpa? Well, as I said, I was just a kid when he passed away, I think I was 9 years old. But in those few years, I have enough memories of the man to believe that part of him, and his personality lives on inside of me.

First, he was what used to be called 'a man's man.' he was an outdoorsman, he went fishing, hunting, he held a blue-collar job and always provided for his family. Things that have always been cornerstones of what I believe a man's role to be. There have been times it was difficult, and maybe even impossible, but I always found a way to get back on my feet. The thing that I didn't realize that we both shared, until it had ended, was that both Grandpa and me put up with an insane wife for far too long. Grandpa died being married to my insane Grandmother. When my time comes, I'll at least have the knowledge that I didn't go to my death, staying with the most ungrateful woman I have ever known.

But so what, right? Sometimes I think that it would have been better to just quietly put up with her insanity, so that I could continue seeing my Daughter, but reflecting back all these months, I can now see more clearly, and I know that she would have only continued pushing, making it more difficult to look at her, and not fantasize that she'd just fall over dead one day, and leave me to raise our Daughter.

Karma will find you, it always does.

So, was I a 'man's man' for putting up with far too much disrespect, far too little appreciation, and no love for so many years?

Of course not, I was a fool.

I had dealt with several therapists over the years and they almost always suggested that children end up happier in a divorced parent setting than they do when the parents stay together and create a hostile, unloving home. Still, it's tough, my Daughter has been the only thing I've ever done in my life that I'm truly proud of, and I miss her more than I have the words to describe.

I've heard people say 'Life's not fair.' and that's obviously true, does that make the hurt easier to cope with? Nope.

But I get it, I get why Grandpa put up with a wife that would regularly pack a suitcase, and declare to her very young Daughters, that she 'was leaving' and then walk out of the house, and march up and down the street as they cried hysterically in a home by themselves as their Dad was of working, providing for them.

He did it, because what he was working towards was greater than himself, and because he loved his daughters more than anything.

The thought of that hits me right in the middle of my chest, and it all makes sense, but it doesn't make the pain any better.