Thank you RayPublisher for calling attention on JWN to the heart-breaking, “Grandmother Tragedy.”
I'm a grandmother who hasn't seen her grandson in over twelve years. In September he was fourteen-years old. We last saw him when he was two. This is the way I was punished for going public about the cover-up of child sexual abuse in the JW religion. And my husband disciplined for supporting me.
If that isn't sad enough, back around 2011 a former JW contacted us when he and his wife moved to Tennessee. He said that at one time they had been in the same congregation with our son and his family in Northern Indiana but had moved away around 2002 or so. During the phone conversation that ensued, he offered his sympathy that we couldn't see our grandchildren because of our being disfellowshipped. I said, "Grandchildren? We only have one grandchild, Luke." The reply to my protestation was, "No, you have two grandchildren. We stopped at your son's home back in 2006 when we were in the area visiting with some of our family, and there was a little girl maybe around two-years old playing with Luke, your grandson, in the yard. During our conversation, Lance said that his family kept him so busy that he had resigned as an elder.”
Later, Joe and I talked about this news that we had another grandchild. We came to the conclusion that the man was mistaken about the little girl being our grandchild because when we spoke briefly to our son on the phone in 2006 to tell him that his grandmother, my mother, had died, he said “NO,” he didn’t have any other children when Joe specifically asked him if he had any more kids. So when we heard about a small child playing in the yard at our son’s home back in 2006, we reasoned that maybe they were babysitting for one of the children of our daughter-in-law’s sisters. We were so sure our son would not lie to us.
However, a few months ago, quite by accident, I saw a recent photo of our son and his wife with their two children, a girl that looked about eight, and Luke, on the Internet. We think that Luke looks much like me at that age and his sister (we don't know her name), looks like her mother.
Many years ago our son asked us not to put a photo we had of our grandson on the Internet. We agreed. However, it doesn’t seem like it’s a big deal now that he put a photo of his children on the Internet, on a site called “LinkedIn” for all his friends and business associates to see, so we are posting the photo here on JWN. We are proud to have such engaging grandchildren and want to show them off to our friends. If this is the only way we can do it, then so be it. Barbara and Joe
Lance Anderson and his family.