I believe my mother lived a similar childhood. I knew her alcoholic father, but not well. He was a traveling salesman and was gone most of the time. Everyone made sure I only saw him when he was sober. He died before I got into my teens.

My grandmother was a larger part of my life, but she died when I was seven and my grandfather remarried a month later to someone he met in a bar. He and his new wife moved away and dissension arose between the adults left in the family so I never saw him after he moved.