My family on the Walters side just weren’t very social critters. I only recall one quasi-family reunion in my life and that was for an aunt’s funeral. My dad had four brothers and sisters who in total had four children so there is not much of a clan to start with. Dad was the baby in the family, the others were considerably older than him so most of my aunts and uncles died before I reached thirty.
The family of my mother’s side were for the most part non-existent. I think during my very early years we lived in a double next to her parents for a year or two but that was my exposure to them. I really don’t recall anything about them other than her father was a night watchmen at a meat-packing plant. She had one brother, maybe more, I just don’t know. Mother was a “bridge burner”, she seldom looked back on life. She was almost totally into herself and that left little room for others, especially in her later years.
I have two brothers and one sister by three different fathers. Pretty much the last time I saw my brothers was when my wife and I took a trip to the “south” in 2002. One lives in North Carolina and the other in Florida. Due to life’s circumstances we were just never very close. I was the middle boy of three and in my earlier years and I simply adored by older brother and walked in his shadow whenever he would let me. But then my mother took him and abandoned the rest of the family when I was about ten. He was ripped from my life pretty much on a permanent basis.
Let’s just say my younger brother sowed a lot of wild oats in his childhood and did some things that I had trouble with. He eventually settled down into a stable family life but it seems that both of us just for the most part went our different ways. My sister was a troubled soul from an early age. She was twenty years younger than me so she was more of a niece than a sister. She died at the age of about forty of some sad circumstances. I grieve that she had such a troubled life.
I didn’t get married until I was almost forty and my wife is older than me by several years so we had no children. I have just not had much exposure to “family” and now of course I never will it seems. So my exposure to family has been very muted in my life. That is except for my wife’s clan.
I was almost in shell shock the first trip I made with my new bride to upper Wisconsin. I was told that there would be a get-together to celebrate our marriage but I was totally unprepared for the magnitude of it. I was quickly exposed to perhaps a fifty aunts, uncles, sibling and all the associated families. Over the last thirty years most of the clan, except for the kids, have passed away so that side of the family is also dwindling.
In some ways I kind of wished I grew up with a “Walton’s” family but who ever really did?
RJ's Corner - Having My Say 
This is a very interesting read and am greatful you are writing it. I know very little about the Walters side. I would love to hear more.
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Sorry I misspelled my own name:).
Kelly
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Hi Kelky :)
That is what this blog is all about. Story telling about my life and of course your dad was an important part of it for at least the first ten years. I don’t know if you have seen the pic here. Your dad is on the far left of the group… Expect much more in future posts…
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Still trying to wrap my mind around your mom. She was in her young teens when she was married to your dad- and you had an older brother? Have you thought through her age when each of you were born?
Interesting read.
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Hi Janette. I was not been able to wrap my mind around mom during the 60+ years I was on/off again exposed to her so good luck with that. She married dad when she was 19 and left him and two of her three kids when she was 28 or so. She came back to the midwest in her forties after her then husband divorced her and married his much younger secretary.
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Just stop answering if it gets too personal.
I am just fascinated by that generation. How they coped with terrible PTSD with alcohol and marriage. Was she married to your older brother’s father?
I am wondering if she married your dad because she had no support for her and the baby. I have been told by my mom that women often felt obligated to give husbands sons – and never attaching to those children. They were “their husband’s child” not theirs. When abuse started- they left their husband’s child because they knew there was no way to “get them”. They had not bonded, so it was easier to do. Close the door and run.
Children- especially sons- were the property of the father, especially in farming states. Still that way in some parts of the Midwest. If my husband had died without a will in Kansas- the property would have gone to his sons and brothers.
All of this, in no way, excuses her. It is just a part of our history that is ignored.
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Sorry for the delayed response Janette. My wife had surgery for an aortic aneurysm yesterday so I was away from my computer. She is doing fine but it was a long day for both of us…
No, she did not marry the father of my older brother. He was killed during WWII. I think she was married for a very short time to someone else before dad but no proof of that. As a previous post said dad did have PTSD but no alcohol abuse. I don’t know about leaving us with Dad because he insisted. He really didn’t know what to do with us after she left so suddenly. If she left because of a “close the door and run” she never mentioned it in the years following.
I know where you are coming from and don’t take it negatively but I believe that all of us have “hard” times in our lives. It is how we deal with them that is important. I do find it ironic that the only child she took with her ended up totally estranged from her. He would not even come to say goodbye to her when her death was close. That says something about this story it seems….
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