{"id":247,"date":"2006-01-21T04:00:00","date_gmt":"2006-01-21T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/estrangements.com\/theblog\/2006\/01\/21\/grief\/"},"modified":"2006-01-21T04:00:00","modified_gmt":"2006-01-21T04:00:00","slug":"grief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/estrangements.com\/theblog\/2006\/01\/21\/grief\/","title":{"rendered":"

Grief<\/h2>"},"content":{"rendered":"

Note: This post was written on December 1, 2005.<\/strong><\/h3>\n

\tJust two days ago someone, a stranger, emailed me to thank me for leaving a compliment on a post on his blog. I had never met him, just admired his writing. I suspect he is young enough to be my son. I had checked out his website and saw that he and his wife are the parents of a newborn baby girl. They have named her Madeleine. He wrote to me, thanked me for the compliment, and asked if I had a blog. I hesitated for several hours before replying. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I hated to tell a stranger who was a new father about this sad
\nblog. In the midst of their joy which is about as far from estrangement
\nas anyone can be when they are new parents and filled with the fear and
\necstasy of bringing home this tiny little person with the delicate
\nhands and adorable feet, who would want to hear about Estrangement?
\nEspecially estrangement from a beloved adorable wonderful daughter? How
\ngrim! What a morbid thought! Get away from me, oh depressing estranged
\nwoman on the internet! He is probably wishing that he hadn’t asked and
\nI wouldn’t blame him. I did tell him about this blog and haven’t heard
\nfrom him again.<\/p>\n

Once upon a time I too was filled with the joy of having a newborn
\nbaby girl and the anxiety over ever unintentionally hurting her. Her
\nfather and I would panic at anything that might be wrong. Some baby
\nclothing had elastic at the wrists that could catch on her little
\nfingers and pull them back. That happened once when we first brought
\nher home and her finger bent way back so that it touched the back of
\nher hand. I was horrified and thought I had injured her permanently.
\nShe was okay. (Babies have looser joints than we big people have.) Then
\nthere was the time that we took her to an emergency room because she
\nstarted to cry in the car and we thought something had flown into her
\neye. They called an eye specialist. Nothing was found. Her eye was just
\nirritated. She was okay. <\/p>\n

A couple of months ago I read a post by a woman who said how she
\nhoped that when her children were grown, that they wouldn’t act towards
\nher as my daughter has acted towards me. I hope it doesn’t happen to
\nher either. I wish it didn’t happen to anyone. Speaking for myself, I
\ncan say that hoping that it doesn’t happen makes no difference on
\nwhether it happens. Doing the best that you can as a parent (or as a
\nkid) is no guarantee that it won’t happen. My experience is not one
\nthat is unique to me alone. People write to me to describe their own
\nestrangements and their grief and shock to find themselves estranged
\nfrom those they loved. <\/p>\n

I have written previously how I read about the comedienne Roseanne
\nBarr\/Arnold\/Karpolsky and her accusations that her parents abused her
\nand how her parents took a lie detector test and passed. Since then
\nRoseanne’s accusations and estrangement from her parents have been
\nincluded in writings on false memories. <\/p>\n

Back when I read about Roseanne and her parents I would wonder what
\nthe truth was and if someone could believe that something had happened
\nthat hadn’t happened. I felt thankful that nothing like that could ever
\nhappen between me and my daughter, felt thankful that we had such a
\ngood relationship that she would tell me even things that many kids
\nwouldn’t tell their parents. She was in her twenties then and I in my
\nforties. Those were the "good old days". In retrospect now I feel irony
\nthat I believed that we had a good relationship and that nothing like
\nwhat had happened to the relationship between Roseanne and her parents
\ncould ever happen to me and my daughter. Never ever ever!<\/p>\n

This morning I looked at my sitemeter statistics and see that the
\nfirst hit on my site this morning and the last at night is coming from
\nthe same place, the area where my daughter lives. This has been the
\nsame pattern for several days with a couple of visits from the same
\nplace during the day. It isn’t a place like New York City where I might
\nexpect to get hits from several people in a day. I saw the statistics
\nand cried. <\/p>\n

It is so sad that a mother and daughter, me and my daughter, the
\nonly contact that we have now is a remote contact on the internet where
\nshe monitors what I am going to say on my site and I see the evidence
\nof her visit. This is unutterably sad. I am filled with grief and
\nsadness. <\/p>\n

People can tell me to move on. Yes, I go on with my life. I have
\nlots to do. I have friends. I have a supportive and loving friend in my
\nhusband. This sadness is an obstacle to getting things done. But this
\nsadness will always be with me even if it isn’t obvious to the world
\noutside of this website. <\/p>\n

There is something about being a parent. Not all parents are like
\nthis. I know that I’m not like everyone. Some don’t think about their
\nkids at all once they’ve been rejected by them. I am not that kind of
\nparent. Even now when I’m not sure that I’d really be happy to be back
\nin a relationship with my daughter if she feels the way that she says
\nthat she feels. <\/p>\n

I mourn the loss of one of the neatest relationships I had in my
\nlife. Not because we each were all that super incredibly terrific
\npeople. We were both normally imperfect people. I just enjoyed being
\nher mom and seeing her grow up. I thought we’d be friends until I died.
\nNow I don’t know if I want to tell her to go away and stop looking at
\nmy website or if I’d feel sadder if I didn’t see the evidence of her
\nwatching. This is so bizarre and painful and sad.<\/p>\n

Snicks
\n12\/1\/06<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Note: This post was written on December 1, 2005. Just two days ago someone, a stranger, emailed me to thank me for leaving a compliment on a post on his blog. I had never met him, just admired his writing. I suspect he is young enough to be my son. I had checked out his…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,69],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-for-parents","category-weblogs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/estrangements.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/estrangements.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/estrangements.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/estrangements.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/estrangements.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=247"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/estrangements.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/estrangements.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/estrangements.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/estrangements.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}