What Brought Us Out Here…Our Story

We have touched on our family situation many times in the past but lately not so much...the pain has subdued a bit in the last 5 years. If you have been following us from the beginning, you know all the gory details, but since we have many new followers, we thought we would once again tell our story.

Right after we were married (over 13 years ago), we were dreaming with one another about our perfect lifestyle. It matched completely, and was actually quite scary for both of us, as we spoke we finished each others sentences. We both had the same exact dream since childhood, to travel in an RV, take photos, write our stories, and share them with the world.

The planning began. For months we researched and loaded our files with great information on how we could accomplish this dream. Then, once again, life had other ideas for us, our only daughter who just got married, announced her pregnancy. Our first grandchild. How on earth could we leave them? We couldn’t so we gathered all the information and filed it once again.

Five years passed and we were living the “American Dream“, or so we thought. We had the life, but it wasn’t ours and we were not happy. But we continued to live it because after all that is what life was all about…the stuff! Our souls were disappearing fast.

About this time, my baby brother at an early age of 40 passed away, then a year later my mother passed away. Both were in Hospice for their last moments and both made me promise to get out and live my dream, no matter what it took. They took their “silly” dreams with them because they did not have the courage to follow them. We were determined not to allow that to happen to ours. There were other siblings but the only reason I stayed close to the family was for my mother, brother, daughter and grandson. The others, well, we never did get along, so there was no reason to pretend anymore.

Once again the planning began, this time with a different twist. We added, what many call a “Bucket List”, we have always called it our “Life List”. We would travel in an RV, take photos, write our stories which would include visiting every NASCAR track on the circuit and crossing every state line as a couple and share it all with the world.

Our daughter was not quite ready to believe this, after all she just lost her favorite uncle and her “Boosha” (Polish for grandmother). We had been her only support after her divorce when her son was only a few months old and since we had our own company and I worked from home, we had our grandson all the time while she worked to support them.

For the first 6 years of his life, he had never been in a day care or sitter for the most part, we took him on vacations and we loved and cared for him to make her life easier. I had been a single parent, so I knew how rough it could be and we had the opportunity to make it easier on her so we were so grateful that we could help her. She kept her feelings to herself and only said she was fine with our decision. Unfortunately, she was not fine with it and it came out quite abruptly much later.

Our well placed plans, fell apart quite shortly after they began but for us, there was no looking back…we drudged through some pretty rough times. Our finances took a big dive and we were in deep despair but wanted to push forward and not allow our dream to go back into the files. Each time we had to regroup, our daughter thought that we would stop this nonsense thinking and come back to reality and settle down again. That never happened and even though we took our grandson the first year we were at the Grand Canyon, she just never quite understood how we could still want to follow our dream through the struggles.

She became angry and we had a really heated argument, which we have had as mother and daughter throughout her life, but this time she held onto it. I waited ten days to make the first contact, felt it was enough cooling down time. Wrong…she continuously refused us to see our grandson. We tried giving her time, days, weeks, months and now years have gone by and she is still refusing us any contact with him at all.

The last time I even spoke to her was over 2 years ago, when I called her at her job since it was the only phone number I had left for her and when I said, “Hi, this is mom”, she replied, “I have no mother, she is dead”. I knew at that moment I could not go through this pain every time I reached out to her, so my attempts ceased.

With all this passing time and the pain of missing out on our grandsons last 5 years of his life, there is a part of me that will never be able to let go knowing that all those missed moments will never be replaced. A few months ago, someone sent us a current photo of him and I did not even recognize him.

The pain subsides and then at times it is so strong that just breathing is hard, but those days are less now and we just put it all behind us and become very grateful that we had the opportunity to share the first 6 years of his life. At the same time we know that we may never see them again all because of a few chosen words said to one another in a heated argument.

The many lessons we have learned due to this has been enormous but the one that always stands out is to always be careful of words spoken or actions taken because there may be no going back…