Real Talk with Life After Grief Chris
Real Talk with Life After Grief Chris
Unraveling Family Secrets
Family secrets can shatter our perception of loved ones and force us to reevaluate our entire history when they come to light after death. We explore the devastating discovery of a father's 40-year affair and second family, revealed on the same day as his passing, just months after losing a mother.
• Discovery of father's 40-year affair and second family on the day of his death
• Being asked to financially support father's mistress and her adult daughter
• Finding and reading hundreds of letters that documented the affair
• Learning why childhood was marked by financial struggle despite appearances
• Understanding how father's deception created lasting wounds for three children
• Process of forgiveness and healing from complicated grief
• How the experience shaped relationship with money and financial planning career
• Reconciling with brother after years of misunderstanding and tension
Stay tuned for part two where we'll explore how this situation impacted my mother and created further dysfunction, followed by a special episode featuring my brother sharing his own experience.
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Welcome to Real Talk with Life After Grief Chris, where we talk about relevant issues as it relates to individuals in grief as they navigate finances and the advisors who help them. We help clients in grief navigate financial matters. We also teach advisors how to emotionally and financially work with clients in grief through an unparalleled process. This week's podcast is sponsored by Life After Grief Financial Planning and Life After Grief Consulting.
Speaker 2:I think I caught some folks' attention with the title of this podcast called Infidelity and Child Abuse, or you can reverse it Child Abuse and Infidelity. Hello, and welcome back to another episode of Real Talk with Life After Grief, chris. What I'm about to disclose may be a shock to some of those in my inner circle and some of those who have been in my family or known my family for a very, very long time. However, I've been encouraged to share my story as it could help many other folks. As I commonly do, I like to start off podcasts with some storytelling, and so the day was Friday, november 14th 2008. This was the date in which my father passed away, so the hospital that my father was at asked for my consent to have a catheter port removed due to infection. My father was in the hospital due to elevated cardiac enzymes at the time, and at the point of surgery, my father had a massive heart attack.
Speaker 2:At that time, I was working at Bank of America and I was specifically on the eighth floor downtown Orlando and, to give you an idea, it's probably about 45 minutes If I leave my office walk to the elevator, go downstairs, walk across the lobby, go up the elevators and get into my car and then I get out of the parking garage, have to navigate downtown, get on the expressway, go to the hospital park, walk, go through their common area and then go up the elevators so probably about 45 minutes. And so I received the call from the hospital that my father died of a massive heart attack and, mind you, this was two and a half months after my mom had passed away. So I raced downstairs to my car from the bank and, honestly, I probably reached speeds in excess of 100 miles an hour. As I was just in complete denial about the whole situation, I first met my wife, ann Marie, at the hospital and I could tell immediately she was an emotional wreck and my wife isn't normally that way and she told me that he was dead. And then I went to his room to confirm what I already knew, and he was laying in bed as peaceful as I had seen him in years, and that concluded that chapter of my life with regard to my mom and my dad. That chapter was over. There was no going back, and what I just explained to you wasn't the worst part of that day, and I'm going to say that my father's death was not the worst part of that day was not the worst part of that day. So I went home where Amory, my brother and whom I've lovingly called my personal priest, his father Leo, would meet me at home. Father Leo has been a constant in my life since I was 16. And he's helped me through a lot of situations and how to navigate life and he was there to pray over us and give us some spiritual guidance. You know, for my father's passing specifically and during the process.
Speaker 2:This is where things start to get a little bit dicey. During the process, I received a phone call from a lady by the name of Sandy Kuhn and I had no idea who this lady was. She called my line, my home phone number, and she said to me your father said, if anything happened to him, that you would take care of us, and I'm going to repeat that. So she said to me and again, I didn't know who this lady was. She said to me if anything happened to your father, he said that you would take care of us. And I just kind of paused and she was telling me that my father was saying that I was going to be taking care of this lady financially. I had no idea who this was. My brother was there and I handed the phone to him and I said, mike, you have to know who this lady is. You got to know about this. I have no idea. And so, yeah, I mean she went on to say that I was going to take care of her and her daughter financially. And again, like I was, I was caught off guard, and so my brother is nine years older than me and I figured he had to have known about something. This was out of my periphery. I didn't know what was going on at all, and the result of this phone call it wrecked me, and so I asked my brother a few questions who this lady was, and then I asked who her daughter was. So the result was this was my dad's mistress for 40 years, and she had an adult daughter who was seven years older than me. I'm going to repeat that. So this lady, sandy, was my dad's mistress of over 40 years, and she also had an adult daughter who was seven years older than me.
Speaker 2:And, like I'd indicated, my dad's death wasn't the worst part of my day. This was the absolute worst part of my day. It felt like somebody, just you know, took a dagger and put it through my heart and I'm just going to pause for a second, I'm going to take a breath. The person that I looked up to a majority of my life was a very dishonest man and caused great pain to my mother and my brother, some other folks and certainly me for a number of years, and two things happened. As a result of that phone call, I learned of my father's affair. After his death, I learned of a potential sibling I'm going to emphasize potential and so my father had always had this brown chest. It's probably about four feet long by two feet tall and two feet deep and he always said to me I never want you going into this chest, and I remember him saying that very distinctly this is off limits, you can't go into this. But he always had a key in the chest, I guess, so he wouldn't lose it, and so when he died, the first thing that I got hold of was that brown chest. You better believe it.
Speaker 2:I was very, very angry with my father, and I just had a million things going through my mind at the time, and one of which is I had no idea if this girl that all of a sudden kind of popped up was my biological sister, and so I opened my dad's Pandora box I'm going to call it what it is and in the box I was shocked. I found hundreds of letters from my dad to Sandy, and then from Sandy to my dad. I also found hundreds of letters from my dad to my mom and then my Sandy to my dad. I also found hundreds of letters from my dad to my mom and then my mom to my dad, and my quest was to find the truth about Kim, and it took me about three months to read each and every gut-riching letter in that box. They tore me apart. Every one of them that I read it just tore me apart, and it wrecked everything that I knew about my father and what I had known about his allegiance to my mother. It was all destroyed, and in one letter I finally found out the truth. I found out that Sandy had a relationship with another man just prior to my father, and the result was Kim and she was not my biological sister. And those were Sandy's exact words in the letter.
Speaker 2:I was completely bewildered at what happened and how my world was now turned upside down. I'd lost my mother in August. I lost my father in November, who I extremely looked up to, and a lot of other people looked up to, my father, and then that image was completely destroyed and I completely felt alienated and alone. I had to now grow up and I had nobody else to look up to. In that dynamic as a father, my brother and I had a lot of dialogue and he knew a lot. And the other thing is my brother assumed that I knew everything and I had to tell my brother.
Speaker 2:I was too young to know when all of this was going on in Kansas city I was under the age of eight years old. We moved from Kansas city to Orlando when I was eight. It was impossible for me to know and put these things together. My brother was 17 at the time when we moved and he stayed back. And that one aspect changed my brother and I's relationship. He thought that I was somewhat okay with what was going on or I was just trying to be better than the situation.
Speaker 2:I actually had no idea what was going on and we talked at length and he told me what he went through for so many years. He was made to lie to my mom and you know, kind of be an intermediary between them and it was just a terrible situation for my brother and I really felt bad for him and I understood why my brother had such disdain for my dad. I really, really did, and I was at that level too, and there were many incidents where my brother he was made to lie to my mom as a result of my father's actions and, inadvertently, my brother's actions as the result of my father unknowingly drove a wedge between my brother and I for so many years. My brother and I were at odds and on a previous podcast we kind of told you how we rectified and my brother and I were smarter than the situation that we were involved in and you know, forget my French but this situation was. It was effed up. I mean, there's no disputing that and you know it gets worse. You know, for me, some things opened up and I will get to the part that this gets worse, as if it's not bad enough, it does get worse. So this situation completely sidelined any grief I was going through with the death of my mom in August of 2008 and my father now in November of 2008.
Speaker 2:I finally reached a point several months later where I did forgive my father and that was very, very healing for me. However, I still had some questions about what was going on or what transpired. I always, as a child, felt broke and I always questioned that. Other people were saying, oh, your family had money and you know, you guys were doing so well, and I always felt broke and those questions would be answered in the years after my father's death and through a lot of self-reflection. Like I said, I forgave my dad and that was a very, very important aspect that was instilled upon me by Father Leo, and so, through counseling, I would be encouraged to have a conversation with Kim and, if I didn't mention this before, kim was the girl that looked up to my father as a father figure and she would answer a lot of questions for me. I reached out and I found her on Facebook and I asked her if she would have a conversation.
Speaker 2:So, in how this transpired, in October of 2020, I honored a commitment to meet a buddy in South Dakota for a few days and during the trip I had some downtime and prior to the trip, I had been speaking to speaking at length to a counselor at the time about questions I had about Kim and some of my feelings associated about her relationship with my father, and I had some infrequent interactions with Kim over the years, as I look back, and I thought it was nothing more than my father mentoring another child and my father was in the habit, from what I understood or thought I saw was in the habit of mentoring other kids and it wasn't uncommon for a kid to come to the house that my father was helping or whatever the case may be. So I had a conversation, I reached out to Kim and she was receptive and she completely opened my eyes and filled in a lot of gaps that I had since a child. And first she disclosed to me that my father was supporting her and her mother in Kansas City. That was another blow to me and my dad paid for her to attend private school dance lessons, you name it and after 40 some years I was finally able to close the loop as to why I always felt broke as a kid.
Speaker 2:My dad was supporting two families. There's no way that anybody normally could support two families. It's hard enough to support one family and I recall, you know vividly as a kid and I tell this to a lot of people the power got cut off, the water got cut off, the telephone got cut off, my mom had to basically make cheap food for us because we didn't have enough money to go out and buy things. We had to shop at the Goodwill and my mom made our clothes and it was just a lot of financial sacrifice for no good reason because of my father's selfishness, and we were paying the price for that.
Speaker 2:And this experience talking about finances this is a financial podcast these experiences with money shaped me and it was an indelible experience on me from an early age. I didn't know why. I just accepted you know that we didn't have a lot of financial means and just kind of moved on and I said to myself I'm not going to be like that and I wanted to be very self-sufficient when it came to money from a very, very early age. And it shaped the way I did things, you know, with money kind of going forward. And I also realized why my father was absent a lot while we lived in Kansas City. He was spending time with my family and then he would go and spend time with Sandy and Kim, and so in speaking with Kim, she also told me that on holidays my dad would spend time with my family in the morning time and then he would hustle and go spend time with her and her mom in the evening, and you know I was beginning now to understand her allegiance towards my dad. I'm going to take a step back.
Speaker 2:There was a Dale fam reunion in St Louis this is probably about five years ago and I elected not to go for various reasons. And after the reunion I found out that him was there, and you know, god works in some mysterious ways. After the reunion I found out that Kim was there, and you know God works in some mysterious ways. And this would have been before I had the conversation with Kim and this would have been a very, very nasty blow up at the family reunion, a very, very nasty blow up. And you know people were saying, oh, your sister was there and I'm like I don't have a sister, and on and on and on. And you know you can just imagine how I felt. But a lot of these things washed out.
Speaker 2:After I had the conversation, you know, with Kim, I also realized that my dad wrecked three lives of kids me, my brother and Kim. I only found out that reality as an adult. My brother lived it his whole life and Kim knew a completely absent father figure after we moved to Florida. So it was just a jacked up situation To take this a step further and naturally my brother's going to develop some unhealthy coping habits along the way. Kim had some issues with men and abandonment since my father exited her life when we moved to Florida and I developed habits of survival, not knowing what was going on. I just had to survive and you'll learn more about that as I kind of get into the next aspect with my mother and how she dealt with the situation. You know, kim told me something else that was very, very sad to me. She told me that you know my mom, my brother and I were family number one and that she and her mom were family number two. That I mean. That just broke me. And she also told me that she and her mom loved us very much. And I told her unfortunately I can't reciprocate the feelings as I only found out about this as an adult and I had no feelings towards her really at all I just really felt sorry for her. But I felt sorry for me and my brother too. And you know, sure, as I look back now as an adult, there are incidents that I can piece together. There was one time in particular that comes back to me.
Speaker 2:My father took me to a lady's house and you know, as a child you kind of take what your parents say. My father said that he's going. He had to take me to a business meeting is what he told me. I didn't question that it was dark outside and I didn't question the fact that when we got there, this lady you know she had a downstairs area and my father just asked me to play downstairs while he handled some business upstairs. Well, the business that he handled upstairs was not the business he should have been taking care of. And I look back and now I understand that I think at the time I couldn't have been more than probably six when he took me. Again, I didn't question, so I just thought, you know, he was going to do some business stuff. He wasn't going to have some relations with a woman that wasn't my mom.
Speaker 2:And I'm sure there's more and you know I choose not to dive into too many of those. I don't want to go too far back, but I can piece a lot of that stuff together now and so I'm not completely a fool and I didn't want to go on Kim's testimony basically alone, so I started calling my mom's sisters and they completely verified her stories and I was both saddened and dismayed. I had no idea this was going on and you know someone said to me well, how did you not know? And I said, well, imagine you're an eight year old kid at the top end when we moved.
Speaker 2:But from ages one through eight, you know some of this stuff is going on and you don't have the ability to put these things together. You just know that. You know your dad is not there. You don't know why. You don't know why you're struggling, you know with money. You don't know why your mom is depressed. You have no idea why this stuff is going on and you can't really mentally process it. And so it was. You know it was pretty devastating and having to deal with that and understand the gravity of that situation. Please stay tuned for part two, where I go into detail as to how this impacted my mother and eventually how the impact on my mother caused further dysfunction to my brother and I, and then, after the next episode, I'm going to be interviewing my brother and to hear a little bit of his experience. I hope you like this podcast and please feel free to send this on to any friends, family members or colleagues. Cheers Be well.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to our podcast. If you are a client and are looking to work directly with Chris and or our firm, head on over to Life After Grief FP. That is Life After Grief FP. That is Life After Grief FP. The FP is for financial planning. If you are an advisor looking to emotionally and financially work with your client in grief, or if you are a client looking to get your advisor's head in the game, head on over to lifeaftergriefconsultingcom. That is lifeaftergriefconsultingcom. Any related information referenced in this week's podcast will be located here in the podcast section.