Skeletons in the closet

Since starting this whole family tree thing, it's been a revelation to me. My father was the best dad we could have asked for when growing up, he's my absolute hero.

Although I knew my grandfather died when my dad was 16, I discovered recently (because he never spoke of it), that he had left the family home before my dad was born.

Also that my dad has a younger half brother (by four months), who lived within a km of the family home (on the way home from my grandfather's work).

I know his & his mother's name, but I haven't followed up on it out of respect for my father who has never (up to last year) acknowledged their existence.

I also found out that my paternal grandmother was expecting when she got married in 1931, although she had fallen in love with someone else, she married my grandfather, the child's natural father. The other person came back into her life briefly in the 1970s & they had several years of happiness together before he died (he was attacked coming home one night & never regained consciousness).

On my mother's side, one great grandfather was gassed in WWI & one was shot in Henry street in 1916 where he died in a doorway & someone stole his boots.

Also on my mother's side there is a huge amount of second marriages, largely due to wartime deaths. We even have connections to a British Navy Admiral.

I have a great, great uncle who has (had) a painting hanging in the white house & one of my g.g.g. grandfathers owned several very large properties around fitzwilliam square (all sadly gone from the family).

There's also some connections to the "Wild West" from a distant relative who emigrated & became a cowboy in Arizona, one of his sons went on to become the town's longest serving sheriff.

I can go back to 1840 on one side of the family & 1870 on the other. My in laws are more difficult as my mother was a second family child & her entire family is dead, without passing on any information, while my father in-law's family don't want to talk about any of theirs (more skeletons I suspect).

The best thing about it though (apart from having something to pass down to my kids), has been talking to my parents, really talking & listening to them, has painful as it was for my dad to tell me about his upbringing (they had nothing, while the second family were quite well off). Talking to him really helped me to understand him, to know him.

I don't have much detail apart from birth/wedding/death dates & I'd love to have more. I get the feeling my family tree research is going to last my life.