[Other reasons on-topic all ye nitpickers]
This was sparked by a dream I had last night. A young girl had died in a car crash, and her family in their grief and pain basically wiped her existence from their lives (pictures, memorabilia), and she became a taboo topic, ne’er to be discussed.
Obviously this could happen with a black sheep who eventually broke the camel’s back and became persona non grata, so that’s on-topic, but I am more interested in the former type.
My Late Brother, Andy, right up until Mom’s death.
Andy divorced Rosemary, who we all loved, and wanted to marry a Porn Star.
No kidding.
And somehow believed that–
The family would support that
And mom would let “that woman” into her house.
My wife has been “dropped” from a relationship by her two siblings both of whom have become fabulously wealthy by their successful local businesses. My wife has a heart of gold and years ago helped out these two younger siblings whenever they needed it. Consequently, the corresponding nieces and nephews have nothing to do with my wife either, even though she kissed their butts when they were children. Needless to say they “know” not to “associate” with the “lower class” aunt and her family (not invited to family events, weddings, etc).
For the most part this has evolved over time as my wife and I are more “ordinary” people but it really has broken my wife’s heart as she’s a lovely person.
My ex-wife is a non person to her family. Before we divorced, she cut off all ties to her family, they readily reciprocated. About 3 years later, she initiated action to cut off all ties to me, with one small hitch, we have a son together. I have only spoken to her a few times since our son turned 18, which was about 7 years ago. I made sure that our son got to know his maternal grandmother, aunts and uncles and cousins. His maternal grandmother, my ex-wife’s mother passed away about 3 years ago. My ex-wife has no knowledge of her passing. She is beginning the process of cutting all ties with our son. It saddens me to watch it happen, as he loves his mother very much.
Except for the dream part this exactly describes the brother of Bob, a man my mom used to work with. Bob’s brother was killed in a car crash as a teenager and the family basically just kind of erased him. Mom worked with Bob for 20+ years and never knew he had a brother. She only found out when a gossipy old friend of the Bob family told her and then warned her never to mention it to Bob because they never wanted to talk about it.
I have a cousin who was adopted from Korea at age ~8, along with his biological brother who was 5-6 at the time. He never seemed to enjoy being in the U.S. He made it through the first year of college and then just steadily/aggressively distanced himself from his adopted family. When the brothers were in their early 20s he gave his younger brother an ultimatum loyalty to him or to the adopted family- family won out. And no one has seen or heard from him in 20 years. He is listed in the family phone/email list but no contact info. He’s just never discussed- until his favorite priest and close friend of the family while he was a teen was outed as a predator/molester priest. But that was used primarily to “explain” why he left… rather than his batshit crazy and judgmental adoptive mother which I’ve always clearly known to be the problem.
I hope he’s happy now. He’s still easily findable by his adopted name on facebook, google, linkedin, but 0 connections back to the family.
Two people whom I know personally.
My wife’s stepfather. He had a family (a wife and two daughters) from his first marriage, which was apparently not a happy one, and he decided that he wanted a divorce, when his daughters were in their late teens. This decision so angered and hurt the (now ex-) wife and daughters that they completely cut off contact with him, and told him to not seek out any further contact (by that point, both daughters were adults). I’ve known him for 30 years, and in that time, he’s had absolutely no contact with any of them.
My best friend grew up in suburban Dublin; her mother was her father’s second wife, and her parents divorced* when my friend was in her teens. My friend’s mother apparently suffered from some psychological issues to start with, but as her kids grew into their teens (she had two of them), she grew to hate the fact that she had kids of that age, because by extension, that meant that she (the mom) was no longer young.
My friend got married at age 23; her mother not only refused to come to the wedding, but essentially told my friend that she had no interest in continuing to have a relationship with her (and she similarly cut off contact with her other child at about the same time). My friend hasn’t spoken with her mother in over 30 years, and no longer even really refers to her as “my mum” – she refers to her by her given name, on those few occasions when it even comes up. My friend is still in contact with other relatives on her mom’s side of the family, but even they have few updates to share.
*Yes, I know, two divorces in Ireland, in the 1960s and 1970s, was a particularly unusual thing.
Husbands niece married a person who was bad news. Her Mother disowned her.
The guy abused the niece horribly. He finally put her in the hospital and was arrested for attempted murder. That and all his other crimes sent him to the pen for a good long time.
Nieces Mother can’t get past it. Even though she has a grandchild.
It’s sad. We tried including Niece in our things. Didn’t work-out too well.
She finally moved far away and it seems is happily remarried and doing well.
All through my childhood I heard about my grandmother’s Baby Brother, as he was always called, who died at two. He was much beloved and doted on by his parents and four older sisters. As an adult I found out that a baby daughter also died two years before. I just looked up her grave, and the only date is 1914 - no month and day, no birth year at all. I don’t think there was malice or grief; it’s just that another sister was not worth mentioning.
That same grandmother had an old cobalt medicine bottle full of screws labeled “Bob Jones.” I asked who that was and heard a strange tale of my second cousin “Jeff Baker” whose real father was “Bill Jones.” When Bob’s mother divorced and married “Fred Baker,” my cousin changed his first and last name, and his birth father was erased from history. As my head swirled, Granny admonished, “Don’t say anything to Jeff!” I didn’t get it, since I was pretty sure he knew. (He was five when his mother married the second time.)
The biggest mystery to me was how Granny wound up with that bottle, but I didn’t dare ask.
I didn’t know her because she was born close to 100 years ago, but we only found out just after both my grandfather and my great-grandmother died that my grandfather had not been an only child. He’d had a sister who had both been born and died before he was born. That we know of he had no idea that she’d even existed, nor did anyone else until the girl’s birth and death certificates were discovered amongst my great-grandmother’s things.
My sister got pregnant as a teen and put her son up for adoption. Our mother didn’t talk about it and pretty much tried to forget it happened.
Fast forward - my sister found her son and I guess enough time passed that Mom’s attitude changed. She hosted her first grandson and his adoptive parents in her home, and has since spent some more time with them. So he was just a non-person for about 30 years.
My family has a similar story, one of my uncle’s left his wife and his high paying computer job to literally marry a stripper, and one that was more “Weekday afternoon” stripper not “Saturday night” stripper.
He basically stop showing up at family events after that because he thought the family was a “negative influence” on him and I havent seen or talked to him in literally 15 years, same with my father (his older brother).
I’ve told the story before.
I’m the eldest of my several sibs.
At around my age 50 after both my parents had died an aunt let slip that I wasn’t really the eldest. I’d had an older brother who had died of pneumonia within a month of birth. My parents had never even hinted at any such thing. The aunt, my father’s sister, had no idea we hadn’t known all these decades and was aghast at her slip-up.
That news hit all of us sibs pretty hard.
Especially my youngest sib who realized that but for that early death he’d never have been conceived. My parents had always been open and explicit about having planned to have a certain number of kids. It is only because the real number 1 died that number last was born.
There’s some guilt or nightmare fuel.
My aunt (my mom’s younger sister) had a baby girl out of wedlock when she was still very young. She put the baby up for adoption and moved on with her life; the incident was never spoken of in the family. The baby girl reappeared on the scene when she was thirtysomething, which was when I first heard of, and met, her. It was a big surprise to everyone in my generation. Don’t know who took the initiative to find the other, but my aunt and her daughter now seem to be on good, loving terms, and I’m happy for them both.
My parents were born in the '20’s and my Mom would occasionally mention there was another sibling, I think a boy, that passed away at two before she was born. Other than that, her childhood memories always revolved around the seven remaining siblings.
I think my Dad’s family had someone who passed away young too. But I’m not 100% sure.
He’d talk about how there were eleven children in the family, but the two oldest girls married and were out of the house either before he was born or when he was very young. He never knew his oldest sister who moved to Okinawa (I’m in Hawaii) and she died there at a young age without ever returning to Hawaii. Well, actually she has. In the 70’s, he brought her ashes back when he visited Okinawa in the '70’s and he’s in the family shrine.
My Mom and Dad have told me their names, but other than “Oh, there’s was one more brother/sister.”, that’s all that’s mentioned about them.
My sister’s husband. A few years ago his brother died after a long illness (I forget exactly what) and his parents basically told him to his face that the wrong son died.
The thing is, I always thought my brother-in-law was kind of a misanthropic asshole, but if he grew up in a family like that, his behavior makes a lot more sense now.
My mother had an older brother who died at three weeks. She knew about him vaguely, but her parents never talked about him. It wasn’t until I stumbled upon him when doing some genealogy research about ten years ago that I learned about it, and my mother didn’t even know his name.
I believe this is called the Chuck Cunningham Syndrome.
Not in my family, but in the wife’s family, sort of. She is of Chinese heritage, and like a lot of Chinese men in Thailand, her father had what was called a “minor wife.” Sort of like a mistress in the West but a more formal arrangement. My mother-in-law was the main wife, and there were four children – a boy and three girls, my wife the youngest. But he had a whole other family with his minor wife, a mirror opposite – a girl and three boys. The minor family was all set up in another household in Bangkok, and my father-in-law would split his time between the two. Not unusually in these arrangements, there was a bit of tension between the wives, and I understand my mother-in-law firmly put her foot down and said no when my father-in-law floated the idea of combining the two families in one big household.
I mention all of this to say the children of the other family all just sort of faded away once my father-in-law died. The minor wife and four other children, all grown by then, even attended my wedding, and there had been some interaction between the two. They seemed like decent-enough people. But a few years ago I asked the wife if anyone ever heard from them, and she said no, not really. hey all just sort of got disappeared from the family annals.
Just to add, I heard evidence of a third possible wife was uncovered at some point, although I don’t think anyone ever confronted him about it. But it would not be surprising.
You’re looking at one. My 28 year-old daughter completely cut me off about 6 weeks ago. She apparently has zero intention of having contact with me.
Every day I die inside a little bit.
I don’t know much about the circumstances. But here’s the bare outline. My grandmother had an older sister and an older brother, all of whom lived to a very great age. She was the last of them to die, at the age of 98, whereupon (through what mechanism I do not know) the next generations discovered that she had had a younger brother as well who had died in infancy. She never spoke of him, even to her children. Neither did the older siblings, as far as anyone knows. Grief? Embarrassment? Something else?
Anyway, it came as a surprise to everyone in the family, that’s for sure.