Mrs. Archibald Bruce McEachin

I just recently discovered that my grandfather was a manic depressive alcoholic.

I found years and years of letters he sent my grandmother that sounded like the ravings of a lunatic. When I approached my mother about it she confessed that her mother's life was a living hell. My grandfather drank himself into oblivion nearly every day. He lost all my grandmother's family money and the attorney's office where he worked was going to fire him, but he talked them in to letting him come in every day without pay.

My mother said for years she begged my grandmother to divorce him. She said my grandmother's answer was always the same, "I was married Mrs. Archibald Bruce McEachin, I had my daughter as Mrs. Archibald Bruce McEachin, and I will die Mrs. Archibald Bruce McEachin."

She did die Mrs. Archibald Bruce McEachin seven years ago today. We grandchildren never knew her pain--the daily anguish of life with a husband who kept track of her every minute because he didn't trust her. Her sacrifice allowed us to have a stable and intact family that I have passed on to my children. The ghosts that haunted her lived (and to a much lesser degree still live) in my mother, but they have almost disappeared in my generation, and not a hint of a trace of them survive for my children.

Protestants don't have saints, but if they did I would nominate her immediately. I know that she is praying for her family.