Hi – I am sharing my story with you and others with the hope that I can spare parents and children sooo much pain – that they would not see coming.

When I was a year and half my parents got divorced. I have an older brother who is two years older than me.

My mom remarried a few years later and when I found out that he was not my real father – my mom said that they got divorced because my father was not normal and possibly dangerous and she was protecting us.

Fast forward 40 years – I am now almost a grandmother – and have never really thought about my father because my mother did a great job painting him into someone I had no interest in. Succos time my daughter, 17 years old, wanted to know what her grandfather looked like and googled him. She found out that he was buried in a certain cemetery. She called the cemetery and found out that indeed that was my father and he had died three years ago.

I can’t tell you how it hurt me – I can’t explain the emotions. I wanted to call my mother but she had died two months before succos. I wondered if my mom knew. I wondered how my father died. Did he think of me and my brother? Did he die alone? What kind of person was he really? I will never know these answers. But, above all, I wonder if I am somewhat responsible for not having kibbud Av all these years. It was not my fault – my mom said he was sick in the head.

I will never find out any of these answers. But if somehow I can change the future of someone else – I would find comfort.

Please parents – stop alienating your children. You say its for our good but I know now it was for your own good.

My fellow brothers and sisters from divorced homes – you think it won’t bother you 38 years later because you just got used to the no contact. It will bother you and it certainly does bother Hashem.

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