My wife and I were married for 31 years. We have 11 children. One day, (June 1, 2017), she took our four youngest to visit her family on the other side of the world and never came back.
At first, my adult children were astounded by what she did. I have their emails and texts. But then out of nowhere, not only did they all turn on me, they filed damning declarations in our court case accusing me of everything from being a bad cook to sexual molestation.
Then one of my adult children went to the local media and got them to do stories of how I was a wife beater and a child molester of my own children.
Only one child refused to lie for her. And that is thanks to his disability (autism). He wouldn't go along with the lies and never gave up on me. It took me five years to get him back.
I have one child who is still a minor who lives with an elder sister. I have weekly phone calls and 30-day visits during the summers.
I went through 6 lawyers, 6 judges, 2 jurisdictions, tens of thousands of dollars, covid shutdown of the courts, and had to represent myself towards the end for almost 2 years.
In the end, I exposed the lies. The adult children knew they lied, but now they are too embarrassed to reconcile.
I can only leave my door open and press on with the children I can still do something for. My attitude towards my adult children - after many difficult years - is that they were going to grow up and move on anyway. I would love them to love me again, but there is nothing I can do at this point but leave my heart open.
I've forgiven them. In fact, I never held anything against them. They were pulled into this trauma by their mother and forced to take sides.
Tragic, yes, but there is nothing else to do other than to "keep breathing," a little slogan I kept muttering to myself that I learned from the Tom Hanks character in the movie "Cast Away" - a movie I watched many times after I found myself alone on the loneliest of islands: the Isle of Abandonment.