His Decision

“He left them, a wife and two children.”   The family that raised him was talking.  One evening he went to get milk for his household, for cereal the next morning and didn’t come back.

Unbelievable. 

The family he was raised with eventually curtailed their agony over what he had done.  They gave up on him coming back to his right mind, but knew where he had taken his physical self.   He was among the homeless in sunny California.  He was okay; but not all right, no doubt about that!

“When he gets old and frail he’ll expect us to take care of him.”    His sister declared that, forty years ago.

It’s been quite a story.

Someone should tell it, but no one will,” I thought.  “He’s a ‘nobody’.  In a culture of icons – political, entertainment, sports, historical, and even criminal icons, he wasn’t anything except a ‘nobody’.”

She said he was her brother. 

She loved him. 

He disgusted her. 

She felt sorry for him. 

His standards were not hers.

He was her brother.

His name is . . . well, she wouldn’t say.  Did offer he was a Scorpio child.  She is also, had just turned eleven years old when he was born. His dad and his mother are her parents as well. Yes, they are full-blooded siblings, always under the same roof until she went away to college.  He was 7 years old, almost eight.

He grew up to go to war, get married, have children, and buy a home – then deserted his family.  Who knew he was a closet loner?  

Selfish was what he was.  Yet, she found herself proud of him. He survived.
 

His odyssey came to a head two years ago.  

There is a story to tell, if for no other – perhaps, his grandchildren.