Sad Predestination | Previous Challenge Entry

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TITLE: Sad Predestination | Previous Challenge Entry
By lynn gipson
12/11/14
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Julie Gelb lived her short life of only 17 years predestined for disaster. Born on May 4, 1950, in Brooklyn, New York, she lived a charmed life for three years. Her mother and father loved and doted on her. Sadly, at the age of three, she lost her mother to leukemia.

Suddenly, Julie was without the nurturing that only a mother can give. She and her father lived the next six years alone, and though he loved her mightily and made her his whole world during that time, Julie mourned the loss of her mother as a child of that age must.

At the age of nine, Mr. Gelb remarried to a mean spirited woman who abused Julie mentally and physically when he wasn’t around. Julie lived in fear and deprivation for four years. Her father still loved and doted on her, and that made the new Mrs. Gelb furious. With this marriage came an older step-sister, whose jealousy of Julie became evident when she teased and taunted her step-sister.

At the age of thirteen, Julie had taken to staying at a friend’s house after school rather than go home before her father arrived. Tensions and alcohol flowed in the house until finally, Mr. Gelb divorced Julie’s step-mother and father and daughter were together once more.

Mr. Gelb found an apartment for the two of them, and life seemed to resume as normal between the two of them. However, Mr. Gelb had developed a taste for bourbon and spent most of his time away from work with a bottle always handy. Julie was more or less on her own, as even when her father was present, he was usually inebriated.

Julie found solace in making many friends. Beautifully put together and with a most pleasing personality, she was very popular in school and found a most popular boy to go steady with. He treated her abominably, however, and broke her heart several times before he left her for another girl.

With a broken heart at the age of 17, she then found another relationship with a young man known to be a love-them-or-leave them type of guy. However, she seemed to have tamed him down a bit, and for a short time was very happy.

Then, this new love of her life up and joined the Navy, and once again Julie felt the horrible sting of abandonment and sought solace in yet another boy while her fiancé was away at boot camp. He found out when he came home on leave and broke off the relationship. Julie was devastated and went home crying one night. Her father consoled her, all the while in the depths of depression and bourbon.

That very night, Mr. Gelb took a gun and shot his daughter twice in the head as she lay sleeping, and then turned the gun on himself. Father and daughter were found dead two days later.

This is the biography of my dear friend, Julie Gelb. It is sad, but true. I write about her because her life meant so much to so many.

Rest in peace, Julie, rest in peace.

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