ESTRANGEMENT REDUX

ESTRANGEMENT REDUX

A little over a year ago I posted a rather personal blog [1] about a family estrangement. To my surprise, this was widely read and commented on, linked to and discussed in a variety of loci. Many bloggers wrote of it, and the incoming e-mail was a mini-deluge.

It was clear that it touched a good many people. Further, it was clear that I am not alone in the experience.

Few people speak of these matters, save possibly in the company of their closest friends, relatives, confidants (and therapists). The loss of touch with a close relative almost always involves an amalgam of senses: pain, loss, frustration and regret. This is a matter of great sorrow.

Time is said to heal all wounds, maybe all old wounds. But it is time that tends to either increase the pain of estrangment, or numb it to a point of near invisibility. Of course, like an old injury, sometimes the pain comes nagging back. It could be a minor ache, or a full-blown recurrence of the pain. Or just a twinge, a reminder of a past event. Deja vu du mal, so to speak.

Last year at this time the nagging pain was hanging around, just wouldn't quite go away, and managed to gnaw at me just a little while each day. Sometimes it so occupied my thoughts it was as though a cloud was hovering over me part of the time. There were reasons for the rekindled annoyance last year: my son had just celebrated his Bar Mitzvah. This, for us, a major family event. There's a nice picture taken the night before the event, you can see it here [2].

My younger child having his Bar Mitzvah, the passage of time, the gathering of many generations to clebrate... all of these contributed to the state of mind that had the estrangement in a top-of-mind awareness when I posted that blog a year ago.

Time is a funny thing. It really doesn't heal all wounds or old wounds, but it sure can put some distance between them. Perspective, too.

Another year has now passed. That relative's birthday came and went, and I gave it minimal thought. No card, no inclination to get in touch (no more beating of this head against that old wall), not a scintilla of predisposition toward even an attempt to do anything about it.

Time and Fate do have a way of playing tricks, though. There was this other very recent event, along the same lines.

I'd written last year about yet another relative, this the one who willingly (or should that be, willfully?)chose to go into a sort of family exile. A scant bit of occasional contact is maintained with the ex-wife [3], and to an even lesser degree, with my children. This gets my daughter all peeved, since this relative is blood to her, but not to the ex.

This relative, after about 28 months of silence, sends my daughter an odd little something in the mail. No phone calls, no birthday cards, no contact for 2+ years -- but, out of the blue, a peculiar surprise comes one day.

The good news is that this means --to those of us who care and are concerned-- that this relative is alive, is able to send a small package through the mail, and has kept an address book with the kids' and the ex's address. This is the equivalent of a "sighting" for us. It stirs up some feelings, yes, but most prominently, it tells us there is something there beyond the chosen "opting out on the family" we've perceived.

My daughter, removed by the facts of generation, age, lack of history, and the minimal contact they'd had before this estrangement (maybe it is more of an AWOL or leave-taking in this case, as opposed to an estrangement), had her own succinct take on the mystery mail, the surprise package: "This is crazy, Dad," she said to me, "But its always been like that, huh?"
From the mouths of babes...

Funny how a year later, and as the birthday of this relative approaches, the matters are not so pressing. The birthday of the other relative, the estranged one about whom I wrote about last year, has come and gone once again, and it was noted in passing but with no great emotional incident.

And now we make way for Lincoln's birthday, the Chinese New Year, The beginning of Spring Training, Valentine's Day, Washington's Birthday, and February's big event: my daughter's birthday at the end of the month.

Time marches on, the memory plays strange tricks, and emotional realities continue in their freewheeling, unusually unpredictable cycles.