After Almost Nine Years...

 Brian's natural father finally now knows he is dead. 

Unbelievable.

We decided to take a birthday trip for both of our birthdays.  We are six weeks apart in age and it's a big birthday so we opted for a trip out west.  

We flew into Denver and then drove to Moab, Utah and went to Arches and Canyonland National Parks.  We crossed the Rocky Mountains and did a lot of nature sight seeing.  It was the most unusual landscape we had either one of us ever seen.  It was gorgeous and it was a very good trip.  On the way to Utah, we stopped at a State Park to gather rocks (my souveniers - cheap date) from the river bank of the Colorado River and while there I got a phone call that literally stopped me in my tracks.

It was my ex-husband --after 32 years.

I almost fainted.  And my anxiety level was through the roof.  Strangely enough even after 47 years away from his control I was shaking and a complete nervous wreck.  I knew either he was calling because he'd finally heard about Brian or I was going to have to tell him.  

Turns out I'm still not sure which it was.  He claimed he called me first to see if I thought Brian would be willing after all these years to talk to him...Not likely.  So I as gracefully as I could told him about Brian's death.  He did not sound shocked.  He asked what happened briefly but did not seem to need a lot of details.  He did say he was sorry for walking away from him 32 years ago and even apologized to me for what all happened in our marriage and after.  It was unnerving and kind wrecked the first two days of my trip.

He and Brian's ex-wife were the only two people that I was furious with in the beginning.  All I could think about was they were the two people in the world that had hurt him the most.  I'm glad that phone call did not come 8 years ago.  It would have gone very differently.  And as many times as I've played that conversation out in my mind - it did not go anything like I'd planned.  surprisingly, I was not angry.  I felt no hatred.  I dreaded telling him and I felt sorry for him.  The only thing I did say was that it was a shame that the call came 8 1/2 years too late because Brian would have been delighted to have gotten that call.  And that just made me sad.  

He now lives out of state and he claimed that he was in Atlanta for a week and wanted to try and reconnect with Brian but decided to ask me if I thought Brian would even talk to him after all this time.  What I believe was closer to the truth was that he was in Atlanta for the week --and this is important - without his wife, and decided to reconnect with Brian but certainly not me and he would not have needed my permission or my opinion so that made no sense unless when he started his search to find Brian's contact information, what he found was his obituary.  And he called me and concocted that story to get the details and confirm that it was in fact Brian.  Either way, he didn't have to lie.  Didn't matter.  He was nine years too late.  Sadly, he has two still living grandchildren and three great-grandchildren that he did not bother to ask about or show any interest in meeting.

So he is still who he is and Brian was just as well off that the call came in now.  God's timing - just right.

But anyway that was a shock.  Eight and a half years later, he finally now knows.  

*Related post September 13, 2017*