Building up a family myth

When I was a child in the 1980s, my parents told me bits and pieces of our family history: „Your grandfather worked as a policeman in the GDR and in 1956 he fled to the West, during the night without telling anybody. Even your grandmother and her three kids – your uncle, your mother and your aunt – didn’t know. One day, they got a phone call from him in the West and he told them to come to the West, too, half a year later.” 
My grandfather, however, remained silent.

When I grew older I started to wonder why he had escaped:
“Your grandfather realized that real socialism wasn’t what he had expected it to be,” my grandmother answered me when I interviewed her for a school paper on family history in 10th grade. My grandfather remained silent.

“Your grandfather realized that he would make more money as a factory worker in the West than as a police man in the East. After all, he had to support a family of 5,” she told me at a family reunion soon after that. My grandfather remained silent.

“You grandfather probably got into trouble drinking. I think, he injured somebody in a pub brawl and that is why he had to flee,” that was what my uncle had told me when I was 19 years old, after my grandfather had threatened to cut him out of his will. My grandfather remained silent.

“Your grandfather had an affair with another woman and eloped with her to the West. Then, he realized that he was lost without his wife and allowed us to follow him,” my mother came up with this version about a year ago after accusing her father of being irresponsible towards his family. My grandfather remained silent.

I always imagined my grandfather's escape in a wild romantic way, like in the movies: him as a young man running over the border strip at night, his former colleges running after him – they have dogs barking, men shouting, spotlights, some shots, but he is faster. He is cleverer. He hides in the bushed. He escapes. 

Then, he would sleep in fields and train wagons until he made it to the far West of our republic. There, he would remain in the underground for about 6 months until he thought it was safe for him to call his wife and children to follow.

But then, the young man had settled down and over the years lost his strength. A month ago, my grandfather, just skin and bones recovering from stomach cancer, broke his silence:
“I heard at work that I was to be drafted to the army. But I did not want to join the army. So, I left during lunch break. I crossed the border, as a policeman I had no problem with that. I went to the next town in the West; there they told me that they would not hire refugees from the East. Then, I called up your grandmother from a payphone, she told me to go to the place where her uncle lived. He could get me a job in the mining industry. Six months later, I had saved enough money to buy plane tickets for her and the kids to follow.”