I don’t know best—and how I learned this: Part Two

In 1992, eight years after Mom died, my husband and I moved to Casper, Wyoming, where I’d grown up and where my widowed father still lived. By 1995, we had two children, and I often thought about how much Mom would have enjoyed her grandchildren.

But our move to Casper turned out to be lethal to my relationship with my father. If we’d lived elsewhere, possibly I wouldn't have noticed as much as I did. At 72, he still got his fun from abusing people, mostly women. This included me and, I observed, he’d successfully sold his public image of being a saint.

One woman actually called him “Saint Robert.” Nobody dreamed he’d continued to abuse his wife after he’d quit drinking. So, while others were hanging on and admiring him, he was abusing me and worse, his grandchildren. I stood it for as many years as I could but eventually disowned him. There was no other way to protect myself and our children, unless Ellis and I moved far away.

Five years later, or more, I realized what this would have done to my mother, had she lived. After I left home for college, I gradually gained mental and emotional health so that eventually I couldn't tolerate any more abuse from my father. Apparently, she was traveling the opposite direction, denying literally on her deathbed that he was an abuser.

The last thing she said to me before she died was, “Dad is a wonderful person. I hope you find someone just like him.”

If Mom had still been alive when I disowned my father, she would have had to choose between her relationship with him and her relationship with me and her grandchildren. Her emotional pain would have been unendurable. On her side and mine, the situation would have been intolerable. Therefore, many times I’ve thanked God for sparing Mom and me this disaster.