In the fall of 2009 our family as we knew it imploded in a fierce burst of awful. This was after years of maintenance strange and two years of ascending chaos as our adopted daughter burst forth into mental decline. Epic mental decline. Followed by the revelation that her biological brother was a pedophile. Then things got worse…

Actually, not worse. Safer and blindingly honest. Grandparents punished the victims and rewarded the perps. Uncles were cowards. Aunts were um, not helpful.

The nuclear families that my husband and I had been born into were destructive forces. I think that the stigma of being in a relationship with the victims of sexual abuse was too much for them to handle. They blamed the victims. It was like an acid bath. They said terrible things.

I drew a wall around us. There were months of fasting and debilitating heath problems. There was our children’s grief. There was the cost to our marriage. It was enough.

We skipped a wedding. We cut off our phone. We changed. Our family became orphaned not just from these near familial relations but also from a church we had served for years.

Our older children remember. Our young ones do not. They do not know their aunts or uncles, their grandmothers or grandfather. My son knows that my father died the year he was born. He knows that we live on a small island of ourselves. He sees these relationships played out on the children’s shows he watches. Dora has a cousin named Diego. Word Girl has a cool grandfather. Every so often one of us will refer to the missing uncle or grandmother he does not know. His eyes will light up as though we are discussing Christmas–I have a grandfather?!. He will ask incredulously.

Yes, I say.

Then his face grows serious. Oh, but he is not safe for us, right?

Right, I say, he is not safe.

The loneliness and loss in his face is the reminder: the ghost of hypothetical family.