My darling niece died last week from cancer that couldn't be stopped. She was 31. She was the sweetest girl, and the smile I remember is smiling back from a picture of the little children she left behind. I haven't seen her since 1998.
Our beautiful granddaughter Aiyana was ravaged by two types of leukemia that overtook her eight year old body in under a month. She left behind a hole too deep to fill. Her maternal grandmother completely missed out on the last 2 years of her life over a family squabble.
A girlfriend's father passed and she didn't even acknowledge it (after 20 yrs without contact). Another friend's uncles and aunts and dad quit talking over a will (3). My bro/in/law and his sister (5); the boys and their dad, sigh, (11/4/ and 2); the girls and their mom (4); the wsm and her sis (25). And that's just people I know.
Opting out of someone's life should be agonizing, but it seems that life is treated more like a military exercise with collateral damage and acceptable losses. Unacceptable! It is unacceptable to excuse ourselves from talking to each other for years. I let my nieces drift out of sight because it was easier that way, for me, like there is a magical opt-out clause when it comes to divorce. How I wish I hadn't.
The littlest disagreements seem to turn into a morality play of ego and demand, and be the excuse to not fight it out and get over it. I would make my boys bunk together when they couldn't get along - and you know, eventually they found a way to make it work. Reconciliation is hard enough without letting a year, or five, or ten help us grow comfortably aloof.
A friend and I had a row that lasted a couple of years once. I've been mad enough at my parents at times to be lost to them for days...weeks...months. I've tried on friends and let them go. But in the end, I know the truth is that everything is fix-able if you want it to be.
If I could pass along this part of relationship-building, it would be to model the courage needed to make a heart vulnerable, show how to step aside and make room for someone, not freak out during the remodel, and hang onto them no matter how steep the climb.
Rest in peace, honey. Sheila Gallagher Kolsters, 11/2/1979 -- 1/5/2011
3rd draft
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