Chapter One – Why Can’t We All Just Get Along?
No families have lived without conflict. And when the time comes to take care of a family member, all the old hurts, the old alliances, the old (and usually no longer appropriate) roles, the old grievances, and the old problems are brought to the forefront. It is a time for compromise and for forgiveness, if at all possible. Not all of us are at a point where we can forgive, but all of us should learn to reach out and see the other person’s position. Edward M. Hallowell, M.D., in his book Connect, said, “If there is a method to making positive connections grow and last in families, I would sum it up like this: keep an open heart, always be ready to forgive, never amputate, and build on the belief that you’re better off with them than without them. In other words, find a way to make it work.”
I will always be amazed by the daughter of a man who had abandoned her mother, her sister, and her when she was around fi ve years old. She described her family before being abandoned as, “The perfect family. My mother was beautiful, and my sister and I were so darling. He left us for an alcoholic who he could drink with.” However, fi fty years later this daughter was doing everything in her power to take care of this same father. Why? Why not show him she had the power to abandon him too? Why not show him what it felt like to be abandoned?
Instead, this daughter took loving care of her father for the last several years of his life. Somehow she assumed the role of a loving caregiver and was willing to do it, even for a man who defi nitely did not deserve her selfless care. She made the trip to Arizona, took him out of the squalid conditions in which she found him, returned him to her home, and brought him to our facility. She and her sister visited him regularly. When he deteriorated to the point that he had to go to another facility, she took him to the best long-term care facility that she could afford. I was amazed.
I tried to figure out what in her family structure and life experiences allowed her to take this kind of care of the father who had abandoned her. Perhaps she needed to prove something to herself and to her father about who she was. Perhaps she needed to prove that in spite of being abandoned so many years ago by her father, she was not a person a father should have abandoned. Perhaps she missed out on the role of daughter and wanted a chance to reclaim that role. Or perhaps she just wanted a chance to show that she had learned to forgive, in spite of everything. In some way, her role as caregiver to an undeserving father completed her.
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