How Could It All Go So Wrong?

Picture this.  You work hard all your life and raise children of your own, looking forward to the day when you can retire and live the good life.  But things don't work out the way you planned and you end up raising three grandchildren because their parents are hopeless alcoholics.  Add to this the fact that the children are also suffering from foetal alcohol syndrome so your hoped for golden years are going to be very difficult indeed.

This isn't an isolated story because there are grandparents all over the world spending their declining years taking on responsibilities for raising grandchildren whose own parents are irresponsible, drug or alcohol addicted, or simply inept.  Young parents never believe a day will come in their future when this will happen to them but it can.

The grandparents in my story are good people.  They worked hard, kept a clean home, and actually planned on saving towards retiring early so they would have many, many comfortable years in their old age.  Then they were faced with allowing their three grandchildren being put into separate foster homes or taking them in to their own home.  Being good people, they chose to delay their retirement plans and take the children in so they wouldn't be separated.

The next few years were filled with many tragedies involving the children but the grandparents held fast and did the best they could.  Today I read in the newspaper that one of the children, now a young adult, stabbed his grandfather because he refused to give him money.  How could it have come to this?  How could the good intentions and good heart to care for these children have turned out so wrong?  

Foetal alcohol syndrome is a mystery to me.  The only thing I know about it is that it seems to dull the brain of the child afflicted with it but that can't necessarily mean that the child will become a criminal.  These grandparents took on a huge load with their grandchildren and possibly couldn't have changed the course of their lives no matter what they did but they tried.

I understand the grandparents.  They did what they had to do and most of us would do the same.  You care for your own even if that involves putting aside your dreams of an easier life.  It's just such a terrible shame when your efforts and sacrifices turn out as badly as this.  And the young man, because of alcoholic parents and his own poor choices, is the biggest loser of all.