It’s not a case of death taking her from me. She got just
old enough to decide she didn’t want me in her life. Old enough but not mature
enough. She didn’t make this decision on her own. She had help from someone who
convinced her that I am despicable, ruthless, and hateful. It was the surest
way for her father to avenge my leaving him and reassure himself that I was
again, as always, in the wrong. Vulnerable in the midst of adolescence and her
parents divorcing, my daughter was likely an easy sell to his way of thinking.
But five years later, it’s still the same. She’s still gone, still lost to me.
The hardest part is that each time I try to reach out to her
to no avail - hear news of her through her sisters - think about her on
holidays we used to celebrate together - I get visited by my old friends, grief
and tears. I don’t like it when those two come to call, but they show up
anyway. Somehow their mission must be essential. While they’re here, I am a bit
slower, more tired, and would prefer some of my day be spent curled into a
fetal position inside my closet. I look around and notice that God is nowhere
in sight, leaving me to entertain these exacting guests all by myself. Or so it
seems.
The loss of my daughter was collateral damage from other,
previous losses which cast their domino effect on various parts of my life.
When I was just a child, I lost certain things, certain birthrights – trust,
security, and self-esteem, to name the most critical - that led to bad
decisions as I got older. Unfortunately, one of the most devastating of these decisions
was my marrying a man who guaranteed the impatience and unkindness that hurt
yet was comfortably familiar to me. I don’t blame myself for this choice - how
could it have been otherwise?
Thank God, literally, this is all history now, and I’m
finally a grown-up who’s learned to take care of herself. And let go the past. But the
wreckage has remained to haunt me. In these years since my daughter’s rejection
of me, I’ve been left to wonder... Did she ever love me? Will she ever want me
in her life again? Who is she now? Will she ever be truly happy if she has been
brainwashed to hate? Like her father, are there portions of her stuck in a
black-and-white world, incapable of change? How will her loss of me – even if
by her own choice – hurt her in the end? And how will it hurt others whom she
loves or who love her?
My thought was to persist, to never give up. But after five
years of separation and no response to the letters, cards, gifts, emails, and
text messages I’ve sent, I am tired. So tired that I’ve finally decided to release
her to live in her way, without me. We may or may not have a relationship in
the future, but finally and with some relief, I will let God decide about that.
Like all our children, she was only mine on lending basis for a time anyway -
too short a time, I feel.
I do recall, and very clearly, spending years throwing my love
into people who were like dark and bottomless wells. The love disappeared into
the blackness, gone forever, and still there was no water in the bucket to
quench my thirst. It has been nearly impossible to think of my daughter, once
so joined to me, as such a person. But the years of grieving have changed me,
given me perspectives I couldn’t grasp before. This may sound like gloomy
resignation, but it is not. It is acceptance of reality, and once again I thank
God for it. I set her free, and I am freer myself to give love to people who
can return it. Life will have its way with her and with me. Change is good.
With humility I realize that finding some serenity about
losing my daughter was always within my reach, but I was not ready to see it.
“Send them love everyday,” said Pearl,
a 77-year-old friend whose daughter returned to her life recently after a
12-year absence. How simplistic, I think to myself at first. Then I see. How
willing have I truly been to work on forgiving my daughter and my ex-husband, as I’ve
done before with my parents and myself? Not very, I’d have to respond. But
therein lies the key to peace and freedom about this heartbreaking loss, I feel
certain.
So now I’m saying those words – “I send you love” – each
day, liking it or not, meaning it or not. Experience has shown me that with
willingness and persistence, someday I will be fully sincere as I repeat them. Someday
very soon, I think. Maybe I already am... perhaps since the day I started doing
it. It’s so simple and yet the last thing I try. Forgiveness. The balm for
wounds of any sort, including even the profoundest, losing a daughter.
