Hey, everybody, I know sometimes here we talk about the topic of how difficult it is when our trauma came from abusers in our own families.  For some of us it was incest, for others like me it was weekly domestic violence.  What compounded that for me was that the domestic violence went on behind the walls of our family home while outwardly my father was a pastor.  

Eventually, the walls he hid his abuse behind broke down, though, and he abused church people like he abused his family.  He then got kicked out of the church and for the rest of his life he has been exiled as a broken man who broke others.  Unfortunately, even now he won't admit what he's done, and stews daily with more bitter rage toward all.  I visited him to try to comfort him when he turned 80, but he hit me again then.  I was 52 and his punch as an 80 didn't hurt me like it did when I was 15 and he was 43 and he bounced me off the walls with his fists.  But it did estrange us, as I stayed away from then on for my own safety.

An old friend wrote me yesterday about her parent's funeral, and then brought up that I was estranged from mine.  Since it was an old friend, I didn't defend my decision.  I spoke of the consequences of my estrangement because of the worse consequences of my being with him.  I also spoke of loving him even now, when I know he's not good for me.   

When he dies I will mourn for him.  But I'll mourn for me, too, and for the childhood I never had.  Not many could understand that, but I think somebody else here might.

Does anybody else experience these ambivalent feelings of being sensible enough to stay away from abusive family but still having feelings for them, too?  

Here's the email I sent my friend about it.  

"From: an old friend

To: Muji

Subject: RE: parents

I'm very sorry for the continued estrangement from your family of origin. No matter how right it is for this boundary to exist, it's painful.

________________________________________

Thanks for noting that, my friend.  I love them from a distance.  If I get any closer it's like I get radiation sickness. I try to remember that the only thing worse than living with them is living as them.  They are in constant psychic agony over lifetimes of issues they can't or won't address.  They use fanaticism and aggression as escapism from them, but it's not effective enough as a vehicle for it.  My choice of teaching literature in my first career as an escape was a better one, with many more centuries of good material for it.

And then I stopped escaping, changed careers, and faced it all, which I suppose is why I teach death and dying classes now.  We teach what we want to learn, and when I teach Tuesdays with Morrie I'm reminded always of that by his aphorism, "when we learn to die, we learn to live."

I have grieved my estrangement from my parents in funerary fashion, but when and if they actually die I expect a special kind of grief will result from it.  Mostly mourning a parental relationship that never was, not even when in touch with them, not even when a child in a home with them.  I will have missed them in life before missing them in death.

Muji"