Rabo's wife and sons leave him

Dorothy’s departure with Terry and Henri is the decisive rupture in Rabo Karabekian’s first family. The separation leaves him alone, estranges him from his sons, and becomes a turning point in his life as both a husband and a painter; decades later, he describes the family’s alienation as one of his deepest sources of shame.

Background and Separation

Rabo’s account connects the departure to a period of accumulated personal loss. In 1956, after Dorothy and their two sons left him, he sold the family’s house in Springs. He moved into Edith Taft’s potato barn, which had first served as his studio and now became both his home and a place apart from his former domestic life. His sons would not speak to him thereafter.

The break was not a temporary absence. By the time Rabo tells his story, Terry and Henri have families of their own, yet neither visits or speaks to their father. The distance has become a settled condition: Rabo calls them alienated descendants and contrasts his estrangement from his blood relatives with the friendships and household he later built around himself.

Consequences for Rabo

The departure coincided with Rabo giving up on himself as a painter. Rather than simply endure loneliness, he says he went looking for it and found it, living as a hermit for eight years. He presents that withdrawal as a prolonged response to the loss of his wife, children, and former sense of purpose, while also identifying himself as a wounded veteran.

His sons’ departure also marks the end of their shared surname. After Rabo later married Edith, Terry and Henri legally changed their last name to that of their stepfather, Roy Steel. The change makes the separation visible in public identity as well as in family contact: they were no longer Karabekians, and their father had no relationship with them.

Family Life and Retrospective Regret

Rabo’s later recollections place the rupture against the domestic care and companionship he experienced with Edith. She filled their large house with practical work and sociability, but that later household did not repair the absence of his first family. Rabo notes that his sons do not come to the house with their own children, underscoring how the estrangement persists across generations.

In old age, he names his failure as Dorothy’s husband as the most troublesome thing for which he feels ashamed. He links it directly to Henri and Terry’s alienation from him, describing them as his own flesh and blood. The departure therefore remains more than a past change of residence: it is the central consequence through which Rabo judges his conduct as a husband and father.