An online apology to an unspoken offline slight
ED. NOTE: Names have been randomly initialized. Also, this digs a little deeper than usual into my personal religious philosopohy. Enjoy.
On several occasions, I've spoken at church about life post-Mom. While most everyone has had personal experience in the matter, S in particular has been a wonderful sounding board.
While his parents are both still alive, he responded to my tales with how his wife G and her sisters dealt with the death of their mother from breast cancer, and the resultant fall-out.
Over time, a couple of items from his responses struck me:
One of G's sisters pitched a fit with God, pouting that her prayers to keep her mom alive weren't answered.
I understand that breast cancer has a much better and longer-term survival rate than pancreatic cancer, and prayer (in concert with medical science) has been known to be beneficial in certain situations. But I was shocked at how childishly selfish she was. Hell-oo. Everyone dies in the end.
The sisters initially resisted when their father started dating again. He did eventually remarry, to their begrudging acceptance.
Maybe it's because I'm a guy and we don't build such complex emotional webs with their mothers as girls do. (Except that Norman Bates. That's probably why.) But again, it just seemed selfish that the sisters wanted to refuse their father's happiness.
S didn't say how long his father-in-law mourned before moving on; perhaps it was far too soon for some/all of the sisters' liking. But with Dad, who started up again (best I can tell) 14 months afterward, I felt that that was enough time.
And now, the story...
Last night at church, G gave an account of the depression that has consumed her over the past year or so. The death of one brother-in-law, serious surgeries for two others, and other various ailments throughout her extended family apparently overwhelmed her to the point where she just went through her days at work and off-days babysitting her infant granddaughter with blinders on. (As far as I know, the baby has suffered no ill effects from the less-than-full attention, and G herself made no mention of any such event.)
I'm pretty much a water-off-the-back kind of person when it comes to the troubles in my world and at-large -- although on certain occasions I do cry; I'm not made of stone -- but I need to understand that different people have different reactions to the same events.
So G, I apologize for harboring ill thoughts about you and your sisters' behavior.
And while I'm not an alcoholic, I think that the Serenity Prayer used in AA can be helpful for anybody:
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.
On several occasions, I've spoken at church about life post-Mom. While most everyone has had personal experience in the matter, S in particular has been a wonderful sounding board.
While his parents are both still alive, he responded to my tales with how his wife G and her sisters dealt with the death of their mother from breast cancer, and the resultant fall-out.
Over time, a couple of items from his responses struck me:
One of G's sisters pitched a fit with God, pouting that her prayers to keep her mom alive weren't answered.
I understand that breast cancer has a much better and longer-term survival rate than pancreatic cancer, and prayer (in concert with medical science) has been known to be beneficial in certain situations. But I was shocked at how childishly selfish she was. Hell-oo. Everyone dies in the end.
The sisters initially resisted when their father started dating again. He did eventually remarry, to their begrudging acceptance.
Maybe it's because I'm a guy and we don't build such complex emotional webs with their mothers as girls do. (Except that Norman Bates. That's probably why.) But again, it just seemed selfish that the sisters wanted to refuse their father's happiness.
S didn't say how long his father-in-law mourned before moving on; perhaps it was far too soon for some/all of the sisters' liking. But with Dad, who started up again (best I can tell) 14 months afterward, I felt that that was enough time.
And now, the story...
Last night at church, G gave an account of the depression that has consumed her over the past year or so. The death of one brother-in-law, serious surgeries for two others, and other various ailments throughout her extended family apparently overwhelmed her to the point where she just went through her days at work and off-days babysitting her infant granddaughter with blinders on. (As far as I know, the baby has suffered no ill effects from the less-than-full attention, and G herself made no mention of any such event.)
I'm pretty much a water-off-the-back kind of person when it comes to the troubles in my world and at-large -- although on certain occasions I do cry; I'm not made of stone -- but I need to understand that different people have different reactions to the same events.
So G, I apologize for harboring ill thoughts about you and your sisters' behavior.
And while I'm not an alcoholic, I think that the Serenity Prayer used in AA can be helpful for anybody:
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.