Does Time Heal All Wounds?

Estrangement, Forgiveness and Restoration

As I sit here writing, I am reminded of the overwhelming gratitude, within my soul, of just being able to write. The tools for which I have, the mom who wrote, who encouraged me and who I admired at a distance.., without her even knowing most of the time. I loved how she dressed, her perfume, her food, but mostly that she loved to sit down and be with people. Perhaps being abandoned in childhood grew that desire in her. Perhaps it was our immigration status and our tiny family.

I struggled more with my dad, because he was a no fuss, keep going, strong-minded kind of man. I didn’t feel heard at times, but I knew he loved me. I knew because as a kid I saw what language was. Language isn’t always language. My admiration for him and the way he created and provided has struck my heart more deeply since his passing. Gratitude for how he kept going through excruciating pain in his bones. Pain passed onto me.

Rather than freeze.. I move. There are days I can’t take it and I lie down. But not for long. I can still hear him say, softly, just before he collapsed, that he could no longer hold his cameras. There were tears in his eyes. That gutted me.

The reason I say these things is that I have had over 2 years to reflect on a family incident that ripped open and tore into every layer of my heart. An incident that left me unable to move. I saw nothing and I wanted to die. It would be my dad’s declining health that got me back up. During this time I sought counsel from experts in the field of estrangement, read books, stories and joined a few online groups. Adult child-parent estrangement is a massive part of cancel culture.

There are also many parents and adult children that just have to go their own way for the sake of survival. There are no redeeming qualities that will mend things. I get that.

I will continue to say that there is nothing new under the sun, however, we have not lived in times where cancel culture has been driven by the rapid pace of “instant technology,” i.e., social media. Technology, as a whole, has changed entire cultures for the good, and for the bad, as people become less valuable and life gets automated -- social media is a certain and cruel kind of special. For example you can quickly align with another person or “expert” that agrees with you or disagrees with you. You can feel bad, gratified or amazing in a hot second. You can be preacher and dismantler. The band wagon you might have discerned years ago is now something you fling yourself onto without thought. It is extremely dangerous and unsustainable.

Impersonal, quietly noisy and drives wedges like sharp knives.

In August of 2018, we were called into an old house. We set out to restore it., yet we affirm the move was to restore us. It was to push us to the brink. We were holding up the roof of our lives. Straining every ounce of energy so that it wouldn't collapse. We met heavy challenges, healed our grievances with each other, from the struggles of life and responsibility, and began to enjoy precious gifts.

Drowning, under a wave that had washed over us almost immediately, my husband ironically and peacefully faced forgiveness to a hard parent, mustered patience, and cared for her until she passed away.

The last time we saw her, she was sitting in a wheelchair in a nursing home. As our visit ended and we walked out, she called us back. Her room was shared with two other elderly ladies that didn’t speak English. One of them had her family gathered around her for a visit. My husband and youngest son were long down the hallway and I turned around. She slowly said, pointing to the other family, “I just want you all to know that I love you.” I said “we love you too” and kissed her.

We got in the car, drove away to get dinner and my husband’s phone rang. The ambulance was on it’s way. She suffered a massive heart attack. A stubborn woman who spent far too much time ignoring those who disagreed with her - she had reached a final place of resolve and wanted everyone to know that she loved them as she pointed to a vision of her family. How I write this is surreal.

Exhausted, emotionally spent, still restoring our home, we walked into 2020, hopeful. Yet the tiger crouched, the world parted in a pandemic sea and the wave dragged us back out.

A police officer’s foot on the neck of a man. An ugly viewpoint of power and control. The media, the world, went mad.

During the riots at the end of May 2020, there would be a phone call and an unexpected onslaught of negative words from our oldest son. He would express everything and anything we had ever done to disappoint him. The main thing was “former” heated political talks. My husband had owned it, years prior, and stopped it. It wasn’t worth the frustration he felt and the frustration he lent to his kids. Life moved on.

Improvement of one’s faults is worthy of a chance at forgiveness, and there was no indication that he was going to pay later on, and I would be included. The tone ripped at his heart and I interrupted what I discerned to sound so deeply wrong on a speaker-phone call. I heard a great amount of patience and kindness on my husband’s end. I was in another room and couldn’t understand who was talking to him in such a hostile way. I said “hello.” I said this sounded antagonistic. It just came out. The tone on the other end was dark. The phone went dead. Immediately after, I picked up the phone, and left a message asking for a meeting. "I love you." "Can we get together and talk?” "What is going on?" "We love you."

Silence became thick air. Loss of family, grandchildren. A friend, a daughter-in-law would not utter a single word to this day. Confusion and despair would rip us to shreds. There would be no meeting. No nothing. Punished. Thunder under our feet. I hastily canceled them in social media. Recently, I discovered that, although hasty, I had insight into healing. Rather than continued torture, looking, yearning, begging, crying... I got rid of what I couldn’t have. Many parents have become self-destructive, hopeless, looking and searching for pictures and signs of life, while continuing to be rejected.

We had both been through a lot of rejection in our lives. But nothing compared to this.

Desperate people do desperate things. There was desperation in the phone call tone and we became desperate in the silence and withholding. It was cruel. We wrote a letter stating the truth of how we felt. There were no cuss words, nor ill intent. We explained how hard we had worked. We wondered why, when we were rising, that anyone would want to push us off the ladder? Especially a loved one. We stated that we took a back seat with other family and it actually hurt as much as we tried to deal with it gracefully.

Despair is never handled perfectly. Despair just is. An imperfect letter, defending ourselves, was rejected. By August 2020 I asked to see our grandchildren who I loved with every fiber of my body. A mixed message was received that nothing was stopping us but that we couldn’t have one without the other. The other was who we were. The answer was no.

My dad would desperately, imperfectly, and boldly ask for this to end in July. Cancer was brewing and he didn’t know it. No one knew. Diagnosed with sciatica, he was very weak, losing weight and could barely walk. He took unnecessary verbal hits in return. He became our protector, defender and went to his grave with no phone call or visit from a grandson that he had a good history with, whom he loved with all his heart.

In all of this, I can now tell anyone who wonders if there is a God., there is. He came so near I could feel Him. A God that prepared me to be “whole” in His holy presence. Whole and loving with my mom, present as we watched my dad slowly take his last breath. For months, nothing came against us except for His amazing love during this time. The unspoken olive branch, extended to our oldest son. It silently said, please come back into our life, let go and love us, let us love you., was rejected. It was heartbreaking but God was there in the middle of it all.

God came in in every facet of my dad’s care, with a community surrounding us like a moat and safety mercies driving to and from a distant hospice, often in extreme whiteout pounding rain. He lay dying over the holidays and his birthday, yet we celebrated, smiled, laughed and loved. A stunning picture of God taking care of us during a pandemic when no one could see their loved ones. So many people died alone.

God knew that my dad needed Him. He needed to hear how much he was loved. My dad had lived his whole life with gaping family holes. Like that of his mom, who I wrote about. A gift from God, to be by my dad’s side, is why an overwhelming forgiveness has been a resounding gong in my brain. It has given me the courage to write this story. To lend a hope.

Forgiveness can be a roadblock of pride. Can I forgive the unrecognizable anger of someone I love? Can grace rise above? Yes, because I need to be forgiven for all that I have done wrong and do wrong. Yes, because our letter was not guided by faith. Yes, because I need to be forgiven for not always loving to the very best of my ability. Yes, because I have been angry and judgmental. Yes, yes, yes, because without this complete forgiveness God cannot work on the restoration of my home, my heart, my family.

On the path of true Forgiveness, the art of restoration is completely in the Master’s hands. It might not happen but it’s best to take the risk. It is the letting go, Divine dismantling and rebuilding from the ground up. We must seek Him in this picture. It is not threatening or punishing. Restoration is a promise that there is a better way, a better life, and a better future. Alone or together.

For now, there is a broken roof, a cracked foundation and a fight that is not ours. The light still shines in, the earth still shakes with His promises and I want to live.

This is the family I keep near my heart.

If you or someone you know is hurting from estrangement with an adult child, there is help out there. Please contact me for prayer or resources. Don’t let it consume you. The chances you will get sick and/or eventually die from this pain are extremely high. I have read too many stories of parent’s becoming very ill. The mind is powerful. A spiritual life of meditation and prayer are key. You are loved.

A perfectly imperfect life belongs to those who seek to love and nurture a child. There is not enough education or peer talk to change that. If you lose in the end, it wasn’t because you sat in the stands.