Choosing between Parents

Alienation

Many of today's families are fractured. When someone will be hurt no matter what choice you make, how do you choose — and choose wisely?

No decision could hurt me more. Two months after Mom's diagnosis of leukemia, our oldest son (her first grandson) planned to be married in Seattle. I had already purchased an airline ticket for Mom so that she could participate in the proud moment with us. Dad posed a problem. After his divorce and remarriage, he had withdrawn more and more from our family and his grandchildren. Invitations to attend special events in our children's lives had been accepted and then missed for any number of reasons. In fact, the last event of significance that I remember was a junior varsity basketball game back in Michigan in 1963, when Dad and I saw Doug score eighteen points on long shots from his guard position. After we moved to Seattle in 1968, Doug's senior year in high school, Dad never visited us in our new home.

   During one of my side trips to visit with Dad while traveling across the country, I told him about Doug's forthcoming marriage. He

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paused, the silence became awkward, and then he asked rather sheepishly, "Can we come?" "We" tore me apart because he wanted to bring his second wife. I remembered all of the invitations that had been extended to him and our disappointments. Our children no longer knew him. Yet in my deepest longing and daily prayer, I needed full reconciliation with the father who had been my idol, my best friend, and the person who had led me to Christ. Now I realized how completely he had created a new life and a new family.

   An ugly picture of conflict flashed through my mind. Where would Dad and his wife sit at the wedding? In the same row with Mother? How would we celebrate as a family at the rehearsal dinner and the wedding reception? Mom's image of loneliness and terminal illness loomed large against the background of these questions. She's suffered enough, I thought. And now her days are numbered.

   "Dad," I said with terrifying resolution, "I think that we can handle it if you come alone, but I'm not going to do anything to spoil the wedding for Mom." Silence again. Finally, Dad answered, with equal resolution, but not without a sting of sadness, "Then I won't come." The hurt will never go away.

   Friends have criticized me for the cruelty of my decision. "Separated and divorced parents are common at weddings," they say. Protocol assures proper distance between them and formal procedures keep communication cordial, at least on the surface. Perhaps I used Mom's illness as an excuse for my own emotions, but I think not. Dad's presence would create enough tension in itself, but to think of him and his wife celebrating together at the wedding would have opened all of the wounds that divorce and remarriage had inflicted upon Mother. No fault could be placed upon Dad's second wife. We knew her as a gracious and sophisticated lady. Neither could I fully fault Dad for his request. He had made a new life from which she was inseparable. Still I had to make a decision, perhaps choosing between the lesser of two evils — Mom's hurt or Dad's hurt.

   I chose Mom. She relished every minute of the wedding week — the last-minute chaos, the rehearsal dinner, the march down the aisle

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on the arm of her son, the special flower given to her by the bride, the wedding reception, the honeymoon send-off, and even the cleanup of wrappings and ribbons. Seven months later she died.

Living with Hurt

If current trends continue, a majority of sons and daughters will have to face the issues of separation, divorce, singleness, and alienation from their aging parents. No easy answers will suffice. In some cases, the years of separation may have created two distinct worlds for the parents. Many times when I ask a divorced person about a former mate, the answer "I have no idea" pronounces that person as good as dead. In other cases, an amicable parting has kept the contact alive through the years, even after remarriage. It's in the wide world between the extremes where the problems of aging take on generational conflict. Each case will present its own ambiguity and demand its own special kind of wrenching decision. In the middle ground — between extremes — we are able to recognize principles that will assist those of us who must decide between separated parents when they confront the crises of aging.

   For one thing, we know that aging always calls out a new set of problems for the sons and daughters of separated parents. No one can anticipate what those problems will be. They may be as simple as communicating a crisis or as complex as deciding how to fund the costs of health care for one but not the other. I can imagine the conflict created if one parent is brought home to live with a son or daughter, and the other is not. Perish the thought that the time would come when decisions about aging parents would sever the ties of trust and love between brothers and sisters. Like the disputes that arise over the assets of an estate after death, more often than not the cause of the family conflict is money.

   Closely related to the new problems that aging brings with separated parents is the alert that latent feelings of the past are bound to surface. We sometimes forget that old age is an extension of all

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aspects of a person — body, mind, and soul. Crisis will aggravate the negative as well as the positive parts of personality and bring to the surface feelings that have been held in check just below the level of the conscious. Guilt and hostility, in particular, will appear when a former spouse becomes ill or impoverished. As usual, the children are caught in the middle. If one parents is favored, the old jealousies reappear, and even if the separation or divorce took place years earlier, old age can mean the resumption of competition for the affections of the children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.

   As the conflict unfolds, a choice has to be made between parents. Separation or divorce may have already forced a choice. If so, old age again will reinforce the decision or, in a reversal of events, open the opportunity for restoring a lost relationship. I hoped that my mom's death would draw us closer to Dad. But when he came to Mother's funeral, he left as quickly as he could from the post-funeral gathering. We knew that he preferred the company of his second wife's children, who lived in the area. My hope for a new start went out the door with him. A show of courtesy, not a need for renewed relationships with our family, brought him to the funeral. Instead of healing, the hurt went deeper.

   When a decision between parents has to be made, the moral dilemma will be a choice between lesser evils. We wish for decisions in which everybody wins, but these are rare in old age. Especially in the volatile and aggravated circumstances of separation and divorce, almost everybody loses. When I told my dad not to come to Doug's wedding with his wife, he lost a chance to be with the family again; his wife missed an opportunity to become acquainted with us; Doug lost the presence of a grandfather whom he once had known so well; Diane, his bride, missed the chance to meet the man about whom she had heard so much; our three young children lost a contact with their roots; my wife lost the anticipated joy of reacquaintance with a parent whom she had grown to love; and I ...I lost the strength and presence of a father. With my decision I dug a hole that could not be filled. Only Dad's death left me more hollow. Because of divorce, the

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generations had passed to me. Emotionally and spiritually, at least, I became "father of the family" before my time. Only Mom won... I think.

   Even though someone will get hurt, we cannot avoid making a decision. A crisis demands a choice. To defer a decision because someone will get hurt only deepens the wound. If and when that time comes for you, as your separated parents grow old, make a quick, clean and clear decision. There may be no time to pray, so prepare for the moment by exercising the discipline of prayer every day and developing the sensitivity to the mind of the Spirit as a ready guide for every decision.

   Not that all doubts will be erased. Ever since I made the choice for Mom and against Dad almost twenty years ago, I have awakened in the middle of the night asking myself, Was I fair to Dad? Was I honest with myself? Did I act too quickly? Would I do the same thing again? As case-hardened as it may seem, in the morning when I awaken, I know that if I had to do it over again, I would make the same decision.

Chapter Six  ||  Table of Contents