Grandpa's First Wife

I’m going to give writing in the morning another go.  With all the late night conversation with the parental units I’ve been falling asleep at the keyboard.  

Last night Mom casually dropped a bombshell.  We were on the subject of couple spats, the big splatting kind, and after comparing some comic scenes Dad brought up the time that his father tried to take a knife to Grandma.  I’d heard this one before, though without the detail that Uncle Dom restrained him.  In previous tellings, it sounded like Grandpa Dellario just gripped a steak knife and cursed loudly in Italian, but apparently it went way beyond.  Double points for Uncle Dom, by the way, since that makes two times he jumped on Grandpa to stop him from killing someone, the other time when Dad cut the board too short and Grandpa decided to reshape his skull with it.  

So, as that story abruptly brought the mood down, Mom says, “She was his second wife, and I think he always missed the first, but you know she died after the abortion.”

I didn’t know.  About my mother’s mother, I knew.  For years we all believed that she died from some type of intestinal disease, but after my mother’s father passed away we learned the truth.  And now my grandfather’s first wife died from a back alley abortion.  Mom said she was pregnant with her third child.  I know that Grandpa was poor.  We’ll never know the reason.

I’m thankful that abortion is safe and legal in this country, and I will help to keep it so.