…after being declared legally dead.
If you were the spouse/child, would you be able to forgive this?
From what I read here, I would not. I can’t come up with any mitigating circumstances that would make this forgivable. I would not want to see her either.
What do y’all think?
It’s interesting to me, because I’ve always been of the mind that if I ever got to the point that I just couldn’t deal with things anymore, I wouldn’t kill myself … I’d take off and lose myself, like this lady did.
That thought-exercise is generally laden with, “I wonder how my family would react if I ever really did that.” The end result in my mind was always - after I showed back up, or was found - “oh thank god you’re okay,” … now, I’m not so sure.
They bring this up as an aside in the article - he collected on the life insurance for her… can they take that money back now?
She WAS declared legally dead so I can’t imagine it’s as simple as “give us our money back!”, can it?
I read elsewhere that the life insurance company assumes the risk for a bad payment so long as the claim was not made fraudulently (not the case here) and the money wasn’t set aside for something (as in a college fund).
Regardless, I would not forgive her either.
Yeah, I was wondering what complications the whole “legally dead” angle would create. How does the law handle the situation when a supposedly dead person turns up alive years later?
I understand (to the degree it’s possible) why she’d just up and disappear like that, but I can’t blame her family for being unforgiving, either. Even if you know the person in question must have been mentally ill in some fashion in order to do that, how do you forgive that level of betrayal?
I gotta think there’s some mental illness at play here
nm
I understand the impulse to run away and disappear. I’ve had that fantasy myself. I even understand actually disappearing and staying gone for a while. But to STAY gone for ELEVEN years when you’ve left two children behind? Can any kind of “mental illness” be adequate reason for that?
There’s a novel with this theme, Ladder of Years by Ann Tyler.
I read that article and the first thing that came to mind was that she looked AWFUL. I can only assume she spent some of her homeless years or more, using meth or something equally destructive. As a mom, I just can’t imagine just abandoning your children like that. It’s incredibly selfish. I don’t even like to think about what those poor kids went through while she was off in Florida. It’s no wonder they want nothing to do with her.
Keep in mind, too, that part of the burden the ex-husband has been carrying around has been the inevitable hostility from people thinking that he killed her. It’s not just that she abandoned him, it’s that she set him up for suspicion.
I assume that substance abuse or some other mental illness was at work here.
The husband said that people wouldn’t let their kids hang around with his kids because of the suspicion.
It certainly was a selfish thing to do to people who loved her. The grief, the suspicion, the worry they went through all those years… Yeah, not nice.
I guess her ex gets to keep the life insurance money, but I assume she won’t ever qualify for another policy! First because a claim has already been paid. Second, because she looks like death warmed over.
My father died more than thirty years ago and I still have dreams that he isn’t dead and returns home. In my dream I feel a mix of anger at him for leaving and joy at seeing him again. I suspect I would feel the same way in real life - conflicted.
I would think that this woman didn’t really think this through. She just drifted away and turned her back on her old life and didn’t really consider the repercussions for her family. Almost like a living suicide. Lots of people, men and women, abandon their families. Sad, for all involved, and I don’t think she’s any worse than any other absent parent out there.
I was thinking more of the opening stanza of Springsteen’s “Hungry Heart”:
I’ve got a wife and kids in Baltimore, Jack,
Went out for a ride and I never went back.
And yeah, if a wife seemingly vanishes from the face of the earth, the husband is the obvious suspect. Especially since they were going through a divorce, even an amicable one. And while our system of laws may say you’re innocent until proven guilty, that’s quite understandably not how people think, and in addition to that there’s always the possibility of a circumstantial case against you being put together, even if you’re innocent.
So if I’d been the husband, I’d be pretty pissed, even now.
Although I agree that what she did was awful beyond words, I doubt very much that I could keep myself from forgiving her and wanting to see her if I was her child.
Of course the ex would have no reason not to hold a grudge. They were divorcing anyway when she disappeared, and even though he was not held legally responsible, people’s suspicions have probably had a huge affect on his life.
A “living suicide” is an apt description.
After I joined the Army I cut off all contact with my Family. After a couple of years my step-mother called my Commander to reach me but I refused to talk with her. I haven’t seen or spoken to any of them since '84. The only one whom I would ever like to see again is my full sister. But she flew the coup before I did. My step sisters all went to live with their Father as soon as they found out where he was. I was the last one to find a way out. I had tried to run away several times before but the Police kept bringing me back. Once I was an Adult I was out and never looked back.
For 11 years she lived as a homeless vagrant. I can’t believe for a second that this was the result of rational decision-making that she can be completely held accountable for. She most likely is mentally ill and probably fairly seriously.
Actually, this woman says the runaway was her live-in housekeeper for a couple years, and looked good when she last saw her in December. She said the woman was going by an assumed named, but confided her real name to her son.
StG
I once had an overpowering urge to just keep on driving one day. If I hadn’t been in the military at the time, which would have made it easy for her to find me, I would have been long gone, I think.
My best friend in the 6th grade told me about how his mother took him and his older brother to the park one day, told them to stay on a park bench, then walked away. They never saw her again. People sometimes act out on their impulses.