Do you know anyone who did the "I'm just going to the shop to buy a paper" thing and who then disappeared forever?

[AliceAir]

Another thread on here reminded me of a girl I was in school with years ago. Her mother apparently popped to the shop to but some potatoes and never came home, and was never heard of again.

I'm not meaning people who have met with foul play but people who have decided to disappear and then done so.

My uncle in 1993, left everything he owned at home and has never been seen again, bank accounts never touched etc, my fad (his brother) has 3 times had to go to identify a body and each time it hasn’t been him, we still to this day have no idea where he went or if he is even alive.

My dad pretty much did this!
Just disappeared one day. My mum was frantic thinking he's had a breakdown.
He kept coming back then going again.
Was always in our lives but when it suited him, we could rarely get in touch with him when we needed.
I later found out in my mid 20s he had another family he lived with! To say it's been damaging to us is an understatement, I do however have a good relationship with him now

My lovely nans mother did this. My nan never ever spoke about it so we don't know details and maybe she didn't either but she wouldn't speak about it, even to my grandad. She was born in 1938, her dad brought her up. Being from a single parent family, with him being the father and he was older may have been hard, he even had one leg after losing the other in the war, so it was tough. Quite a few years ago, her two half sisters (there were older and younger siblings I think) turned up at her door after tracking her down. She wasn't in but my grandad was and he took their details. She didn't want contact. I couldn't understand it for a long time, but maybe the thought that her mother had looked after other children, yet abandoned her, was too much. Her mother hadn't come also. She was also very loyal to her dad, he was her hero(he had passed at this point so nothing was stopping her). It may have been the pain that made her say no, fear of abandonment again, or maybe she just didn't want to know, I kind of admire that strength.
She was the best mum and nan, and a very strong woman, her mother missed out.
I find it weird to even think of this woman as my great grandmother.
My nan passed away in her early 70s, her mother may still have been alive. I do wonder if her sisters look like her, if her mother did. My aunt looked into it all after she died, but my grandad said it was against my nans wishes and it should be left. It's strange knowing there's family out there we may walk past yet have no idea.

Yes this happened to me, my mum took me to to school when I was 9 and never came back for me, we've not seen her since, the only contact was her telling the police that she didn't want to be found - this was 25 years ago, still no idea where she is and no inclination to find out

don’t believe it will cause him damage as I grew up without my parents and never felt abandoned by them. I am messed up but I have inherited mental problems and I was sexually abused at school.

How can you say it hasn't affected you when you say you have been an addict, have mental health problems and were able to abandon your own baby?
Can you not see the damage that has been done to you by their actions? damage which you have carried on through another generation?

We have had two cases of this in my family alone.

My grandmother ran away to get married at 16 for true love. Instead of love she found an incredibly controlling abusive alcoholic. She had babies after babies into grinding poverty and everyday casual violence.

One day she took them all for a walk, to a pretty local building. Told them to sit in a hallway and she’d be back in a moment. She never came back and had left them in the local social services building. She didn’t move away or even hide the fact she got remarried and started a new family in the same town.

She’s a very cold, harsh and calculating woman, possibly a result of the abuse she suffered .All her children in both the first and second families have significant issues (including my functioning alcoholic of a mother). I think the abandonment of the first family and the fear of abandonment of her second (she used to threaten them with the same) gave them a void that they all clamour to fill. They all will fight to the death the tiniest crumb of approval from her. It is a terribly messed up dynamic, one which I personally feel she delights in and actively encourages.

My Aunt moved house without telling her son. They packed up and left after he had gone to school. They absolutely refused to tell the police or SS where they moved. It didn’t work the first time and they were made to disclose the information. Before he was released by SS they abandoned the house they bought and fled to a foreign country, where they live to this day.

Sounds awful but they couldn’t cope with his behaviour anymore and were genuinely terrified for the safety of their other children. He seemed the most charming delightful boy to those that mattered in SS/School when my Aunt tried to get help for both them and him, but he was not - he was very disturbed and hid it very very well. This revealed itself at a later date and he now resides indefinitely at Her Majesty Pleasure. That’s all I am saying on that subject.

[quote MelonsMelons]@SchadenfreudePersonified she wasn't a very nice person, but I only knew her a long time after all this. She treated her children dreadfully, I could probably fill up every page of this thread with awful stories about it all. The thing I have always wondered is why she was like she was, was it because of the things like her husband leaving in that way and her giving up her child (apparently she had intended it to be a short term foster but she could never get the baby back, obviously this was 70 years ago now) or did he leave because of how she was. I dont know much of what her life was like as a child. I do know she put her kids through some horrific stuff though. He was an alcoholic and she ended up leaving him for his best friend about 5 years later.[/quote]
Some people's lives are so full of pain it just breaks your heart to think of it.

Yes I agree, I do believe her behaviour would have been a product of what happened in her life but to know and see what she then put her children through is awful. The amazing thing is that her children all became amazing parents and have given their children amazing lives so the cycle can break eventually.

Oops name change fail

A friend of the family lived with his mum and sister in Scotland. His dad was English and a ‘travelling salesman’. One day, when he was a teenager, his dad went off to work and never came home. They have no idea where he went or even what his real name was. They were never able to track him down but suspect they had been his second family since it turned out that the parents had only pretended to be married. But, being the 1940s or 50s, it was never talked about more. The friend of the family is in his 80s now and has spent his whole life with a surname he believes is made up.

F

Yes. I know a woman who left her kids and DH and moved to another country with her new fella. She was due to go on holiday with the family the following day but just walked out and never looked back. No contact with her parents or siblings either. It was a complete shock to everyone. She comes from a lovely family and her DH is a kind, gentle man. He has raised their (now young adults) children to be lovely people. She just decided she’d had children too young and wanted fun. The kids were under 8 when she left.

This happened to my DH's Mum.
She was married and living with her DH and small baby son. Her DH went to the shops and never came back. She since remarried and had more children.

@DailyMailHater

My uncle in 1993, left everything he owned at home and has never been seen again, bank accounts never touched etc, my fad (his brother) has 3 times had to go to identify a body and each time it hasn’t been him, we still to this day have no idea where he went or if he is even alive.

That's so sad, your poor dad.

@changingmine yeah it is awful, my dad tries everything to find him, Salvation Army, writing to prison service, ads in the big issue. My dad says he understands if he doesn’t want to see him but he just wants to know if he is alive, their own fad died when they were very young and his older brother looked after him as my Nan worked 3 jobs to keep them afloat as he left them a lot of debt, and i think my dad sees it as losing another father

@lockedownloretta

don’t believe it will cause him damage as I grew up without my parents and never felt abandoned by them. I am messed up but I have inherited mental problems and I was sexually abused at school.

How can you say it hasn't affected you when you say you have been an addict, have mental health problems and were able to abandon your own baby?
Can you not see the damage that has been done to you by their actions? damage which you have carried on through another generation?

@lockedownloretta so you are blaming my parents leaving me for the sexual abuse I suffered? My drug use started a few months into the sexual abuse. My mental health problem is inherited, my grandfather has it, my uncle has it, my aunt has it, I have it, my brother has it. So not due to being abandoned. I was able to abandon him because I was numb, I walked and I couldn’t bear retuning to the walls where his father, my best friend, my partner, the only constant in my life had died. We were just kids, and as kids we had already drafted up a contract with his parents to adopt our son if we weren’t handling it. I know at 17 you’d have done things differently, but I didn’t.

@tistheseasonnottocoughin

I'm sorry it happened to you. Somehow, no matter how progressive we become as a society, it's always more shocking when it's a mum.

My grandmother's life-partner walked out on her husband and children, moved 300 odd miles from the town they lived in (and where she'd met and courted my grandmother), and raised my grandmother's children as though they were her own. Her children - from what I can gather she had a son and a daughter - were never mentioned, and it was only when I was a late teenager that I found out she'd had a family before ours.

She was a wonderful step-parent and -grandparent; genuinely loving and doted on all of us as though we were biologically "hers". I adored her as much as I did my grandmother. When she died, I did mention (discretely) whether or not we ought to notify her children... I'd want to know if it were my parent who'd seemingly vanished off the face of the earth... but it was brushed aside and never mentioned again (although my grandmother did tell me the stage name of her partner's mother - but at the same time made me promise not to "dig into it"). It later transpired that she'd actually changed her name at around the same time as she'd followed my grandmother and her children "down south" - think from "Kathleen" to "Chris" (not actual names!), and we're not sure if the surname she used was one she'd adopted, her married name, or her maiden name. We can't even be sure if her birthdate was correct. So, even though I do wonder about her abandoned children, and hope they've led happy and full lives - I have no way of helping to close what could well be an open door on both sides.

Selfishly, I'm just grateful that she was such a huge part of our family's life. She and my grandmother were together for over 50 years when she died, and my grandmother followed on only a few months later from a sudden heart-attack (which I suspect may have been broken heart syndrome). They were absolutely devoted to one another.

I was one of the missing but it was done by my ex looking for sympathy the evil twat

My dad’s great-grandfather walked out on his wife and 4 children, moved to another country and remarried bigamously.

My DH’s uncle walked out on his partner and children, moved to another country and started a new family. His two kids don’t know about their older half-siblings.

Handsoffstrikesagain my children are grown up and left home.

@Dullardmullard
I was one of the missing but it was done by my ex looking for sympathy the evil twat

I’m not sure I understand? Did your ex somehow force you to go missing?

[quote bluebluezoo]@Dullardmullard
I was one of the missing but it was done by my ex looking for sympathy the evil twat

I’m not sure I understand? Did your ex somehow force you to go missing?[/quote]
In a way yes but No he reported me missing when I wasn’t. My picture up on shop windows.etc etc

I had to go to the police station to tell them why. He was an evil fukker enough said.