What  would  you  have done? (Part 1)

 

The following cases involving abandonment are selected as Part 1 of a series on ‘What would you have done?’ This series presents to you traumatic events in  the lives that people were in and who had to make decisions on what they actually did or didn't do when a traumatic situation came into their lives.

 

A person who abandons his or her family may feel chronically overwhelmed by responsibilities and/or stress in a relationship with his or her family. Physical abandonment changes a family system's roles, rituals, and traditions, and social interactions in complex ways.  Such changes within the family can cause temporary or long-term anxieties until family members adapt to them and stabilize themselves as a family again. The abandonment may lower the family's functionality and generally will cause most or all well-bonded family members a significant feeling of loss and insecurity which may take years to overcome.

 

By giving that person who abandoned you your forgiveness, you might experience peace, hope, gratitude and joy. But alternatively, you may very well feel betrayed and a sense of resentment and a suspicion that you will again be mistreated by that person. When someone you care about abandons you, you will probably at least initially if not permanently, feel anger, resentment and thoughts of revenge.  

 

Suppose one of your parents or your spouse deliberately abandoned you and years later, that person re-entered your life and asked you to forgive him or her. What would you do? The cases that follow in this article are examples of people who abandoned their loved ones and the responses of those who were abandoned.

 

 

In 2002, Brenda Heist was a car dealership bookkeeper, and she was going through an amicable divorce and had just been turned down for housing assistance. After she dropped off her children at school one day, she went to a park and cried in despair. Three strangers reached out to comfort her and then offered to let her join them. She readily accepted their invitation. On that spur of the moment, she left her half-done laundry, the defrosting dinner and her daughter and son, then 8 and 12 years old and vanished without a trace from their lives.

 

Brenda and the three strangers hitchhiked for a month along Interstate 95 on their way to South Florida. She slept in tents and under bridges, survived by scavenging restaurant trash and panhandling and kept her previous life a secret, contacting no one she knew while using a pseudonym.

 

Her husband, Lee Heist, was investigated. He said that there were people in the neighbourhood who would not allow their children to play with his children because he had been a suspect. He was cleared however as a suspect and struggled to raise their children. By 2010, he was able to get the courts to declare her legally dead and he subsequently collected on a life insurance policy. He also remarried.                                                             

 

I don’t know what she was doing during the eleven years she was away from her family but I do know that jail and court records show that Kelsie Lyanne Smith (the name she was going under) was arrested in January 2013 on misdemeanour charges of marijuana possession, possession of drug paraphernalia and providing false identification to law enforcement. After pleading guilty, she was sentenced to time served and was released on February 13. She was also ordered to pay court costs but failed to do so and was found delinquent on April 15. She also lived in central Pennsylvania for a while as a vagrant.                                                                                  

 

Eleven years after she vanished without a trace, Brenda Heist (now 54) approached police in Florida to explain that she had abandoned her two children on the spur of the moment, leaving behind her old life in central Pennsylvania to become as vagrant in Florida. She later explained about her abandonment of her family by saying that she just snapped and turned her back on her family, friends and her co-workers. She said that her ‘new life’ had now lost its charm as she recounted her journey into a life of vagrancy. She also told the police she had become homeless again, living in a tent facility run by a social service agency. She said she was at the end of her rope and that she was tired of running. Those statements to the police were probably the only statements she said during that eleven-year absence that were honest.

 

Many people never take the time to learn what it takes to become a loving spouse or a caring parent. It is just something many people think they can handle until they face the reality of married life with the responsibilities that go with it when they have children in the family. Generally however, it is the fathers who abandon their families.

 

My own father (Louis Vincent Batchelor—now deceased) was a rapist and my birth was the result of that rape. At first, he supported my mother and me for a few months after my birth but he later abandoned us to live with another woman for several years. Then he returned a few years later and then joined the Canadian Air force. In 1944, he returned to Canada and lived with his mother in Toronto for many months while my mother, my younger brother and I were living in a small mining town in British Columbia. When he decided to come to us, he got within 26 miles of our town and changed his mind. He caught the train heading south and when he got off of it, my aunt who was about to get on the train to return to Wells spotted him and she later said that she had a tough time trying to convince him that he should get back onto the train again and come to us. He did this but during the summer of 1945, he abandoned us again and returned to Toronto permanently. Did I ever forgive him? No. However, I saw him 20 years later and we met on three occasions but I came to the conclusion then that he hadn’t really changed so I never visited him again. For the rest of his life, (21 years) I never contacted him and neither did my mother or my brother. Speaking for myself, I had my own life to live and I didn’t need a loser cluttering up my life like he did when I was a child. Brenda Heist’s son more or less forgave his mother, however her daughter has not done so.

                                                                           

Morgan Heist, now 19, said the news of her mother resurfacing has made her recall with bitterness the years of mourning she endured when she assumed her mother was dead and feared she’d been murdered. She said, “I ached every birthday, every Christmas. My heart just ached. I wasn’t mad at her. I wanted her to be there because I thought something had happened to her. [Now] I wish I had never cried.” She also said that the disclosure has angered her and she is not eager to restart their relationship. Her former husband said he was angry because of the effect his children’s mother’s disappearance had on them, but he also said he has forgiven her.

 

Brenda Heist was released from police custody in Florida and is at the time of this writing, staying with a brother before she moves in with her mother in Texas. She should be thankful that her mother didn’t abandon her when she was a child.

 

Forgiveness in situations such as the examples I have described to you is hard to offer someone who has deliberately abandoned you. Admittedly, the act of forgiveness is a decision to let go of resentment and thoughts of revenge. The act that hurt or offended you might always remain a part of your life, but forgiveness can lessen its grip on you and help you focus on other, positive parts of your life. Forgiveness can even lead to feelings of understanding, empathy and compassion for the one who hurt you.     

 

I remember reading a story when I was a child about a man who was always beaten with a rope by his father when he was a child. When he grew up and was a farmer, his father whom he hadn’t seen in years, approached him looking for work. His father at first didn’t recognize his son but when he saw that the man was carrying a short length of the rope with him, he realized that the farmer was the son whom he had beaten with a similar rope when his son was a child. He stood there in front of his son and trembled in fear. Then his son said, “Hi Dad. It’s nice seeing you again. Come and help me bring my cows back to the barn.” His son had forgiven him.  

 

I did not forgive my father because he never changed. He was always abandoning his responsibilities. To me, he was a loser that I didn’t want or need cluttering up my own life like he cluttered up our lives earlier.

 

What would you do if someone you loved abandoned you simply because he or she wanted to live a different life without you and then that person came back and said that he or she wanted to be part of your life again? If you have an opinion, feel free to submit it and I will enter in at the bottom of this article.