Grandma's Pearls

Researching the past

I talked to my stepmom the other day and as usual, she was talking about my Dad. She calls to talk about him when she has been drinking. The drinking is an every day occurence. I really wish she didn't drink so much since her health isn't the greatest but, I can't control everything that everybody else does. I learned that a long time ago. My father passed away on Feb. 3, 2004. He was in the Army for 20 years before he retired in 1976, so, you could almost say we were estranged. What I mean by that statement is that he wasn't home very much when I was growing up. Being in the military, he was stationed anywhere and everywhere. After a few years of traveling around with him, before I was 6 years old, Mom decided that she had enough and we didn't go with him anymore. We came back from Germany when I was about 6 and I had a new brother and sister. I have lived in Kansas and Kentucky and Oklahoma. There may have been other places but I don't remember them and I can't ask either of my parents, since both are gone. After we came home from Germany, my Dad was sent to Vietnam. I'm pretty sure that was very hard on my Mom because it was hard on me. There were years that went by without a word from Dad. Eventually, my mom fell out of love with dad and they got divorced. That happened when I was 10. My dad met my stepmom about a year later and they got married. He was still married to her when he died.
Like most kids, I held out hope that they would get back together. That never happened. I did learn from my dad that he still loved my mom even though he was married to my stepmom and I learned from my mom that she still loved my dad. She said that he was her first love and that she would always love him even though they couldn't live together. In a way, that was comforting.
Anyway, back to the research about the past. I went to a website for the National Personnel Records Center and requested copies of my father's military records and copies of his medals and color bars. It was very easy to fill out the paper work. I have copies of his discharge papers from the military and it had all of the info that I needed. But, my stepmom told me that there are pictures of my father hanging in Ft.Knox. She said the photos are of my dad and his tanks and that they are hanging in the hall. I was trying to find a website or something where I might be able to see the photos. No such luck. I did find a website for the Patton museum though. That brought back a whole bunch of memories about spending one summer with my dad while he was stationed at Ft. Knox.
My brother, sister and I used to play on the road they were building that would eventually lead to the museum. It was great! We had big dirt hills to run down and climb up and if you went across the road and climbed up the other side, you were at the museum/park. They park was great. We had a tank to climb on, in and over, there was a jet you could climb on, and the usual swings and stuff. Back then, the Patton museum was free We used to go there all the time. They even have General Patton's underwear on display! Needless to say, that was a big deal for us. Of course that was almost 40 years ago. It is funny, how the memory works. Doing research for one thing and then suddenly, you are transported back in time, to when you were a kid and times were good.
It is one of the few times that I remember being with my dad and my brother and sister were there too. Most of the time, it was just me. They were really mad at him for many years because he married someone else and had kids with her. What really hurt them was the fact that he chose to stay and raise them and not my brother and sister. It really upset them for a very long time. The year that my father died, my sister had finally decided to make amends with dad. She was going to go visit him in th summer of '04 but dad died before she could do that. It was really hard for her to go to his funeral. She felt guilty for not knowing him and forgiving him sooner. I think she thought that if she had forgiven him sooner, he might not have died. That isn't the case but, that is how the brain works sometimes.
I have good memories of my dad because I got to spend more time with him than my brother and sister. They only have a few good memories and those are very few. Most of their memories are of disappointment, where my dad is concerned. The times that he said he was coming to pick us up and then didn't show or he was going to come for a visit and then didn't.
He knows now that the kids he left behind turned out better than the kids he chose to stay and raise. I have 2 half brothers. One of them is over 30 and still lives at home. The other is in his 20's and he is finally getting his act together. He lives on his own but still needs help from my stepmom(his mom). He makes plenty of money to support himself but spends it on beer and lots of things he doesn't need, before he pays bills and buys groceries. So, my stepmom has to help him out regularly. My stepmom is living on a fixed income with benefits from the army. She gets my dad's retirement from the army. The military has a program where you pay so much a month and then when you die, your surviving spouse or kids receive a check every month for x amount of time after your death. My dad paid for survivor benefits for over 20 years, so my stepmom gets benefits from that, along with her social security check. She gets a decent amount of money to live on but, having a son living at home that is over 30 and an alcoholic/drug addict, she doesn't make nearly enough money for his habits and hers.
I say this reluctantly, my mom did a better job raising us than my dad did raising them. There, I said it and now the world knows it. My brother and sister would never treat my mom the way they treated their mom and live to tell about it. No, my mom wasn't that strict but there were rules and if you didn't follow them, you had to take the consequences. I learned a long time ago, Never ever tell your mom to shut-up! I made that mistake once and I said it in a whisper from the other room. My mom had the ears of a hawk and she heard me. Needless to say, I couldn't sit comfortably for a few days and the yard stick was just a ruler after the encounter with my behind! Even though my mom is gone, I still don't say shut-up to her. I might ask her to be quiet or I might say sshhh or hush, but, never ever shut-up!
My kids don't tell me that either. Their kids don't say that to them. Guess that is something to pass on to your kids these days. Too many kids have absent parents. Their parents are there but not actively involved in the kids lives because they are too involved with their own BS to pay attention to the kids and how they are acting. There isn't any respect for others or their things or thier life. A lot of kids don't realize how precious their life is until it is too late and they have wasted it. That is a real shame. That is an abomination in my opinion. Life is too precious to just waste it. How can you not appreciate being alive? There are so many good things in the world and too many kids now days just don't see it. Sure wish I had a cure for that.