My grandmother on my mother’s side passed away before I was born, so I never had the privilege of meeting her. She died after a long battle with cancer and my mother and her siblings were devastated by her death.
Just six months later, my grandfather remarried. The woman he married was a lot younger and the family was shocked by how soon he moved on, but they tried hard to be supportive.
His new wife, Cathy, had a child from a previous marriage, a young girl named Lucy. When Lucy was five, Cathy and my grandfather had a child of their own, Sarah.
Throughout Sarah’s life, Cathy and my grandfather decided that they would tell her that Lucy had the same father, even though this was a lie. They lied about their wedding anniversaries to keep up the pretence and even asked Lucy to vow to keep the fact that she and Sarah were only half-sisters secret.
They wanted so much to uphold the ideal of the perfect family, but they were tearing the family apart instead. My mother and her siblings began to distrust their father and resent Cathy.
At a family gathering several years later, I made a frustrated remark to my brother about the tension and sense of secrecy that came from the lies and deception within the family. Sarah overheard my comments and demanded to know what I was talking about. Upset by the situation, I blurted out that it was something she needed to ask her parents about.
Sarah confronted her parents and they told her the truth about their family. The unnecessary lie tore them apart and she still struggles to understand why they insisted on deceiving her for no apparent reason.
Sarah now has a beautiful four-year-old son and is trying to mend her relationship with Lucy. However, she hasn’t seen her parents since that day. The lies most certainly weren’t worth it.
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