Dad stopped hitting us when he was diagnosed as terminal, meaning he fucking KNEW IT WAS WRONG

[Godot51]

10. Weakness

My mother and her sisters all married career Navy men during and after WWII.

I was fortunate in that my parents seldom disciplined me (and I was a pretty wild kid growing up in the 50s and 60s: sex, drugs and rock and roll).

However, my mother's two sisters and their children were subject to abuse (physical and mental) up until the time their husbands and fathers became old and weak and dependent on their wives and children. Suddenly they were all sweetness.

As a child I never feared my father but I didn't trust my uncles, they were hard drinking, serious men with sharp tongues. I felt strange when speaking to them in their old age, it was as if nothing had occurred and all was forgiven.

They're dead now and their families miss them and speak fondly of them but sometimes the truth appears in our conversations and it isn't nice. The scars are deep and are usually hidden but they are still there, waiting to surface.