I am the result of my mother’s biggest heartbreak

Biggest heartbreak: When my mother was younger, my grandparents used to host exchange students from all over the world. My mother is the youngest sibling of four. My grandma gave birth to her seven years after the last boy, making her a lot younger than the rest. Being the only girl, she was daddy’s little girl. She was spoiled rotten by both her brothers and her father, but because of the year gap, she was also kept home a lot and not allowed as much as her brothers.

Every summer a new exchange student came, and my mother was usually left behind at home when her other siblings took the exchange students out and about in town. I have no idea how many exchange students they’ve had through the years, but in the summer of 1990, a Danish gentleman moved into the house.

This Dane (let’s call him G) was a good Christian, well-behaved, and was sent to England as a part of his law studies. At the time of his exchange, he was 21. He was from a rather wealthy family who all were lawyers or jurists as far as I’ve been told.

At that time my mother was seventeen, and the only child still living at home. She was still going to school, studying, going out with her friends, and doing whatever a girl that age was doing. Even though G was a law student, he was humble and always helped out a lot at my grandparents’ home. My mother also helped out my grandmother a lot with housework which allowed her to get to know G well.

(My grandmother told me she always suspected my mother of fancying him from the very beginning since she out of suddenly offered to clean the entire first floor – which is where G resided at the time.)

As time went by, my mother and G became closer and closer and eventually developed a romantic relationship with each other. They were very close and spent all of their time off from their studies together. They’d go to the movies together, she introduced him as her boyfriend to her friends, and life was a fairytale for G and my mom. They’d spend every single evening together, and once the house had gone to rest, my mom would sneak into his room to spend even more time with him.

Soon my grandparents discovered the relationship and its serious character. At first, they weren’t too keen on the fact that my mother was falling for an exchange student as they were well aware he’d be leaving them soon. But G was a good man from a good family, he was able to provide for his future family, had good Christian values, and was seemingly full of love for their daughter. So when he asked for the daughter’s hand in marriage, they happily agreed. So after eight months of knowing each other, G proposed to my mother and she accepted.

Spring came along, and G was set to return to Denmark. A few days before his departure, my mother fell ill with apparent food poisoning, and he took care of her. They spent their last days together in her bed talking about their future together and planning every single detail of their beautiful future together.

G would go back to Denmark to finish his exams and break the news to his parents that he was engaged to my mother. They would keep in touch through letters and vowed to be faithful and wait for each other. He was the love of her life, and she couldn’t wait to get married to this man and start a life of their own. So he left, and the waiting game began…

Soon after his departure, it turned out it was not a food poisoning my mother had gotten – she was pregnant with me. I was told she was the happiest she’d ever been when she found out, and she wanted to surprise G with the news when she heard from him. She never did. She wrote an endless amount of longing love letters for him that he never read.

December 8th, 1991 she gave birth to me, aged 18. I’m sure she loved me to the best of her abilities, but it was as if I was a constant reminder of what she had lost. My mother had bright green eyes and red hair, but my eyes are hazel and I’m dark-haired. She was a victim of a lot of gossip: my mom was a young uneducated daughter from a good Christian family who had fallen pregnant out of wedlock with a man who ran away and left her behind.

My mom raised me with help from my grandparents who loved both me and my mom dearly. I did well in school, behaved nicely, and had friends like every other kid. I went to high school, played soccer, chased girls, had friends, and had a pretty normal life after all. When I was fifteen, my grandpa died from heart arrhythmia, and a year later my grandma passed away in her sleep. It wasn’t until at this point it started going downhill for my mom.

Eventually, life came crashing down. My mother started drinking, and the bottle got the best of her. She drank away all the bad memories and passed away from a heart attack in December of 2012, less than a week before my 21st birthday.

My mother never remarried nor did I ever get any siblings, so I was left alone in this world aged 20. I won’t lie, it was tough, but I held onto the things my mother had taught me since I was a kid:

Get an education. Never lose faith. Be good.

Now I’m engaged to the most wonderful woman, and I am the step-father of a beautiful, smart little girl and I consider myself the luckiest man in the world. I thank God every day for bringing them into my life and for giving me the strength to carry on.

To this day, I have no idea whether G knows about my existence. I have no idea what happened to him – if he was a dickhead taking advantage of a young girl if he ever made it back to Denmark if his parents didn’t approve of his decision… All I know for sure is he broke my mother’s heart, and that I refuse to acknowledge him as my father.

You might be interested in: How I Lost A Pretty Damsel to Silence – Part 1