Family abandonment

   I  recently watched a documentary that had a lot of parities to my family life. As I watched I could not help but make the comparison between the documentary and my mothers side of the family. Weird how some things can reflect your life. I guess it just goes to show that other people share your experiences even if you dont know it.
  The Documentary I watched was called "Family Values." It is about a woman who's mother dies in the late sixties. He father re-marries and leaves the state that his three children are in to move to the opposite coast with his new wife. He has a "new" family but neglects his "old" one. The daughter who happens to be making this film is a lesbian and her father is a right wing conservative, enough said. I wont go into grave detail about the film, but it is interesting to see how a family member could abandon their family and make no attempt to fix things, let alone stay in contact with his own children. It was such a shame to see this happen to three descent people and it was rather distasteful to see the father so well off in his new life with his new family.
  How does this relate to me, you maybe asking. If you are not family or have not heard me talk about it, then I can see how you could ask me that question. My grandfather did a similar thing to our family long ago before I was ever though of. Before I launch head first into this brick wall of a story, a little background might be in order.
  My Grandmother and Grandfather were married young for today's standards. He was a Scranton police officer, my Grandmother a house wife for most of their marriage, she later worked for the Jewish Home of NEPA and completed some odd jobs. They had seven children moving from Scranton, PA. to Buffalo, NY. and then back to go old Scranton. After the last move they settled down finished having kids and then my Grandfather had an affair with Grace, left his wife and seven children and started anew, not leaving a care to the world what happened to them. After all he was a Scranton Police Officer and no one would mess with a guy who had connections.(Isn't that just the way of the world though. Oh, if you could hear the story about the day my Grandmother found out about " Amazing Grace" but some stories are best left to only the families ears.)
  Anyhow, my Grandfather had a "new" family to start with. My aunts and uncles grew up to be some of the best people in the world creating an extensive family. My grandmother managed with very great difficulty to support seven children, she for a time was on welfare, and though she was not proud of that part of the story, she did what she HAD to do. My mother, who has a very great distant for my grandfather and will, as I believe, never forgive him took it hard. My aunts and uncles have mixed feelings, some talk to him once in a great while, others don't care. It should be mentioned that, in all fairness, he did try a little bit to see his grandkids for one holiday a year. Not much, but I guess it was an effort.  The gifts.... nothing we liked. My cousins (the girls) received dolls until they were well into their teens. They all hated them. I know, we should be grateful for the gifts, but it just goes to show you how little he knew about us.
  You know, come to think of it, the last time I saw my Grandfather was probably when I was thirteen. (I am not twenty-four) I saw him a year ago sitting in a Dunkin Donuts with some person talking. I could not help but stair. Do you know it took me fifteen minutes to figure out it was him. That's sad! You want to know whats worse, he did not even know who I was and whats even worse than that, neither of us said "Hello" even if we did not recognize each other right away. I wonder how many time he has seen us and not made any effort to say "Hello" or "How is everything going? How's the family?"
  It blows my mind how someone can turn their back on a, lets face it, a part of themselves and not really care or half care. How does one go about doing that and not feel anything? I would like an answer to that.
  He is getting on in years and one day he will eventually die. That will not be a happy moment, and I would attend his wake, but I sometime wonder "Would I feel anything?" After all he is my grandfather, which, without him I would not be here but I don't know him. I don't know his middle name, I don't know his favorite color or what he like to eat or if he likes to read. Nothing. (I don't even know if my aunts and uncles know the answers to the above questions.) If I have not attachment, would I be able to grieve or would it just be another guy in a coffin that I vaguely knew? Again, its a shame I even have to contemplate that question.
   In the end our family turned out half way decent. Struggled some, you bet. Had ups and downs, doesn't every family? Pulled together when needed, of course. We are smart, loving, caring and close nit. We will defend each others honor tooth and nail, even if it means spending our first night in jail. We cheer each other on, smack each other up side the head when we do something stupid and tell each other "It's gonna be all right." even if we  have no idea how its going to turn out. You know what though, we learned all of that from our Grandmother, who taught it to our mothers and fathers. We did not learn that from our Grandfather, and even if we did, the credit still will go to our Grandmother, because she was there for us. She help us out, and was their for our births, parties, graduations, weddings and such.
   How does one leave? How does one just simply start over when you have created something so unique the first time around? How does one really go about doing that!?