I wanted to write something about this. At first I just posted the photo, well, that was after I tried to put something down about it but couldn’t quite manage to find the words.

This little boy, Jackson, and the circumstances surrounding him and his father (my brother) and my parents and how much they love this little boy, and how much they do to ensure they have a relationship with him, well that is the very essence of family.

And, my brother, the wonderful man who rejected this lovely little boy in favour of an evil woman, and then fell out with his brother (me) because I won’t reject my principles when it comes to family and fatherhood. He’s perhaps the very essence of anti-family. Or, to put it another way, family when it suits.

Mike has his wedding. I wasn’t invited – and wouldn’t have gone anyway, on general principle. I’m angry with him. I’m angry at the situation he brought about. I wish it was different but it’s not. He refused to stand by his family – and not ‘just’ family like a sibling, or an uncle, or a cousin, but his own first-born child. His own son. That disgusts me. It makes me angry.

I see so many fathers who are denied access to their children when that is all that they want. They are denied access and lack the resources to fight that denial, or lack the education to know what they can do to fight that denial. And here we are, a man who was raised right, is educated, has resources at his command, who chose to not have a relationship with his own first-born son. How does he sleep at night?

Family, your children, your children’s children, your brothers and sisters. You can’t pick them. They might infuriate you. You might sometimes think you cannot stand the sight of them. But they’re family and, maybe it’s duty or obligation, but you stand by your family. You do not abandon them.

Especially when the ‘them’ in question is an innocent child.