WHAT DOES A WIFE BEATER LOOK LIKE?

1943, such a lovely couple, such a sad fate

It was the middle of the SECOND WORLD WAR. Let that sink in. Not one, but two WORLD WARS where every country in the world was fighting for survival and taking sides. 

Tom and his mother

There was a pretty young teenager, actor Tom O'Rourke's mother, whose father was in the Merchant Marines and was going back to fight in his second world war, and she married a sailor her father introduced her to. He was a tall, handsome young man, from the Midwest, charming, full of hope and plans for the future, if they had one. She was just eighteen when they got married, just nineteen when her son, Tom, was born. She and her mother were managing on their own because both of their husbands were away at sea, fighting the war and might never come home. All the young men were away at war. And some of the older ones with much needed experience were called up to serve their country again. 

Her father, the Merchant Marine

and his new grandson, Tom

What a lovely couple Tom's parents made. But, looks can be deceiving. After her husband returned and couldn't find a job in New York City, he took his city girl and son back to the Indiana countryside, to a town that was miles from nowhere. She had no car, no TV, no old friends, long distance phone calls were a luxury, and her husband was unhappy. Very quickly, the marriage deteriorated into an eleven year, three child, drunken brawl, until she went back home to her parents in New York City. After nine years of poverty and no child support, no new husband willing to raise some other man's sons, she was dead.

One more baby boy came along, before she fled back to NYC

to shelter from the abuse.

Child abuse, alcoholism, and wife beating make childhood a hell and ruin lives. Tom's life was ruined. He never understood why he did the things he did. He was mentally broken, so deeply in his unconscious mind that his craziness seemed natural to him. He couldn't escape his problems. He was far from stupid and he was successful, but he just didn't understand himself.

Rest in Peace Tom, your struggles are over

This is the strangest afterlife story you will ever read. A man with a divided soul, one in hell and one in heaven, came back to confess the truth and expose how the devil ruined his life. A must read for anyone struggling to reconcile sin and mental illness.