During the depression my great grandfather abandoned his wife and seven children. Without any way to feed her children, my great grandmother put them all in an orphanage. She felt so despaired at having left her kids in such an awful place, she went back and reclaimed the oldest, Mary. The rest were all adopted out to various families. My grandfather was adopted by the peterson's. He was seven. The peterson's had no children of their own and since they were getting on in years, they needed someone to work the farm (I actually own the land the farm existed on and have set up my house and a cute little store on it)
They beat my grandfather like he was a worthless work horse and even made jokes about the five dollar bastard horse they bought. He had a nervous breakdown when he was ten and the sheriff told Mr Peterson that if he beat my grandfather any more, they'd end up killing him. So the beatings lessened but didn't cease. My grandfather (in spite of all this) grew to be a good man. He was a good husband and a good father. I really think he grew up good because as a small child he'd been raised with love. He ended up having seven kids. A few years after my parents were married, they received a strange phone call from a woman named Mary. She was all grown up and her mother was dying and her mother's only wish was to see the children she gave away all those years ago in the same room together. Mary was trying to find them all.
So on the death bed of my great grandmother, her estranged children gathered, and were together for the first time in decades. She died the next morning. The kids all stayed in touch and were very good friends for the rest of their lives.
It's a sad story and a beautiful story. I've gone several times to write it, but my cousins might not like that very much . . . Maybe someday.
