"I held on to my pain to punish her," a writer penned in his novel The Noel Diary. I've recently read two books with similar themes, family distress and pain. One dealt with marital dysfunction, absenteeism and abuse. Intertwined in the telling was a beautiful story.
The narrator had become a novelist using his past to carve fine tales, learning the steps and craft of walking through life. In spite of his troubled roots, he had become a gentle, caring individual.
The second held a similar theme. Both narrators had suffered the loss of their only sibling, in a sudden, accidental death. Both families crashed in divorce and brokenness. The author of The Long Hello, retells her life with an adored, supportive mother and grandparents, loving and being loved. Her story is largely centred in the present, with the harshness of the day-to-day, walking with her mother in the nightmare of Alzheimer's disease.
She struggles with who her mother is becoming and others' inability to cope with the new normal. Her relations keep trying to correct the mother's confused thinking, not understanding her world. Though an RN, the author is slowly disintegrating under the weight of being present within her mother's changing reality. She struggles with guilt, for resenting what is and guilt for not being able to be more.
As I read, I recognized in each narrative glimpses of other stories, lives of people that I have known. Most of us have endured pain and heartache. Most have achieved moments of great reward in relationships, family or otherwise.
About a week before my 13th birthday an older brother died accidentally during the summer holidays. It was my first memory of death and loss. It has affected how I view pain that I see in the lives around me.
I had one friend in elementary school whose father was suspected of being a harsh and abusive man. His family was afraid and secretive, careful not to talk out of turn. It was only as an adult that my friend felt safe to share her difficult home life with me.
Another friend had been adopted by an older childless couple. She and her younger sibling were much loved but left to deal with life as they saw fit. She had little guidance and ran wild. As an occasional visitor in our home, she found the requirements and structure of our large family somehow comforting. She told me that my dad cared enough about her to try and correct her behaviours. She felt that she had value to someone.
As I get to know people I wonder about who they really are. Often difficult childhoods lead to difficult adults. Like the saying goes "hurt people hurt people." In many instances good, sound teaching early on breeds more rounded, supportive behaviours in later years. Sadly that isn't always true.
I've also known people who developed life interests in direct opposition to their upbringing, on purpose. In some cases that meant choosing to become positive, against all odds, or turning away from a history of abuse. I know of an instance where the victim of abuse seemed to have said, "This stops here," and did not carry the behaviour with her. When I meet very difficult people in my daily life, encounter rudeness in line at a checkout counter, or observe disrespect or road rage on our streets, I wonder at the background of that behaviour. I choose to react with kindness, to offer grace instead of responding in kind.
- Joyce Hoey is a longtime Gazette columnist
