Saturday, October 06, 2007

A thing called Karma

Sometimes it takes a life time to understand why we did the things we did. Sometimes we get paid back in spades.

What was I thinking?
Part of getting on in years is dealing with the wrong things we've done to our kids. After so many years, most denial goes away--ours and theirs (the ones we've wronged). That passage in life is very, very painful and needs real discipline, honesty and introspection to get through to the other side. There's the adjustment to what is as opposed to how it was supposed to be.

Meanwhile, that introspection can seem interminable. With each revelation, a new mourning and adjustment period sets in, then more guilt, more anger because more fantasy is thrown out about who you thought you were, more...and more. Will I ever be forgiven, will I ever forgive myself? The time passes too quickly not to be reconciled, it would seem. Isn't that the point of working through these problems with your family? Sometimes, yes. Sometimes, we can't change their minds. They're bitter and have the right to be. Nothing you say will change that now. Maybe never.

Sadly, relationships between parents and children change dramatically when these realizations become too great to keep from each other. That's when the results of your past catch up with you demonstrated by standoffishness, loss of intimacy and fun and even more importantly, being cut off.

My mother was a very complex person--brilliant and accomplished-- ahead of her time when it came to human relations...I thought. She told me on her deathbed that she had held on to the wrongs she'd allegedly done to me. It was then she came clean about some of the more unfortunate times between us. It's funny. When a person loses one parent as I had eleven years before, you become very aware of how special that last one is. I couldn't hold it against her...and she did say she was sorry. Saying sorry was something my mother never said in her life to me. In fact, when I had done something wrong as a little kid, I'd say I'm sorry. She'd respond, don't say you're sorry, say you'll never do it again.

She also told me I was like her emotionally. I'm still working on that reality.

Forgiveness of one's self sometimes is held up by the lack of forgiveness of others. Maybe that's backwards. And the rest takes care of itself. Wishful thinking gets you through the day sometimes.

Thanks for the read.