do you think people that destroy their marriages for affairs go on to be happy?
Probably depends on the individual and all the unique circumstances of a particular family separation.
Over the years news filtered through to us that our father was very happy with his new life in his new marriage. This alleged happiness he built on a foundation of our enduring sense of loss, ongoing pain and the ramifications of extreme upheaval at a time when it was likely to create a very different path to the future than the one we had been walking. Being plunged into poverty tends to alter the opportunities on the table. Motivations to "be responsible" ring hollow when one of the adults who drummed it into you was anything but responsible, and seemed to be doing better than anybody else in the equation. His road to happiness had the collateral damage of our path to the future turning grey, stormy and a lot more rocky.
So.. he was happy.
We found out he died via the internet. The day after we found out I took the phone number from one of the sites and called. In lieu of a death certificate, a funeral, something tanglible, I wanted to check this wasn't a case of us being put through the wringer based on crossed wires leading to inaccurate postings and unchecked Chinese whispers letting the news spread to a few more sites/forums.
The poor bloody woman who answered the phone damn near keeled over when she found out the childless man she had known for 20 years had 3 middle aged children. We talked for a bit (well, she talked, I mostly sobbed). and she said something...
"he always did have this air of sadness about him"
Maybe she made it up, because she thought it might make me feel better, that in hearing it I would believe there was some recognition in his inner recesses at the loss he had caused us, perhaps a loss he also felt.
Maybe it was true.
I'm not sure which is worse. That all of us hurt for more than 3 decades, he died with the hurt, and we can't resolve ours because... he' s dead now. Or that he hurt us terribly and went on to be happy , at what feels like our expense.
On one level perhaps it doesn't matter either way if they go on to be happy or not, cos it's not like them being unhappy too resolves the left behind people's pain.
On another level I think it might matter. Because I turn over what that woman said about his air of sadness like a pebble I am polishing to make a kind of diamond. Because it's the nearest I have got in 30 years to feeling like we mattered, he noticed what he caused for us, and maybe he was sorry.