Not a Redemption Arc

I'm not evidence for anyone's argument about family. I'm just a woman doing math about her own capacity.

Hello, friend.

When people find out I’m helping care for my elderly father, they sometimes get a misty look on their face, like they’re witnessing a redemption arc. Like the difficult history between us has been resolved or healed or set aside in some meaningful way.

I want to be careful here, because I don’t want to be unkind about the people who offer me that look. They mean well. They’re moved by what they imagine is happening.

But what they’re imagining isn’t quite what’s happening.

A recent The Ethicist column in The New York Times Magazine posed a question I’ve been sitting with: what do we owe parents who failed us? A letter writer estranged from a neglectful, emotionally abusive mother now showing signs of Alzheimer’s was told by her mother’s husband that she would be responsible for her care. The Ethicist’s response was clear: nobody has the right to ask this of you, and we have no duty to abandon our own lives to look after parents who failed in their parental duties.

I agree with that answer completely. And I also need to say something about my own situation, because I think people sometimes look at what I’m doing and draw the wrong conclusions.

I haven’t forgotten what led to my estrangement from my father for 12 years. During those years I did an enormous amount of therapy. I built skills I didn’t have before: how to set limits with people who push them, how to identify what I can control and release what I can’t, how to be in relationship with someone difficult without letting them damage me. I did that work not because I planned to reconnect with my father someday, but because I needed it for my own life.

It turned out to be useful when I did reconnect.

I came back into relationship with my father before his Alzheimer’s had significantly affected his memory. The therapy, the boundary-setting, the years of practice at knowing what I would and wouldn’t tolerate meant I could show up for him without losing myself in the process.

He may not remember our history now. But I’m not showing up because the slate has been wiped clean. I’m showing up because I made a decision, based on my own values and my own capacity, that helping him was something I could do without it costing me more than I could afford.

I’m doing it because he is a human being who needs help, and I am someone who can provide some of that help. I’m doing it because my sister is also in this with me, and I love her, and I don’t want her carrying it alone. I’m doing it because—and I say this with full awareness of how complicated it is—I can. I’m a widow and an empty nester, which gives me some time and energy to put toward him.

None of that means I think he deserves this from me. Deserve is a word I’ve tried to stop using in the context of caregiving, because I’m not sure it does useful work. When I was Tom’s caregiver, I wasn’t there because he deserved it—I was there because I loved him and he needed me.

My decision to help my father has nothing to do with anyone else’s decision about their own estranged parent. I am not a model. I am not an argument. I am not evidence that reconciliation is the right choice, or that estrangement is something to eventually “overcome,” or that people who don’t reconnect with difficult parents are making a mistake. The woman who wrote to the Ethicist should not feel one iota of guilt for saying no. Her situation is her situation. Mine is mine.

The people who look at me with that particular warmth think they’re seeing someone who chose connection over distance. But what they may not be seeing is all the work that made that choice possible, or the clear-eyed understanding I brought to it, or the fact that I still know exactly what happened between my father and me, even if he doesn’t.

Yes, I have forgiven him, but forgiveness doesn’t mean what people sometimes imagine. It doesn’t mean pretending the bad stuff didn’t happen, or that I’ve decided it was acceptable, or that I’ve rewritten the past into something softer than it was. I remember it clearly. Forgiveness, as I practice it, means I’ve accepted that it happened and I no longer carry it as an open wound. It means I hold no ill will. It does not mean I’ve forgotten. What I’ve done—and this took twelve years of work—is find a way to be present with him without being harmed by him. That is not available to everyone, and it is not required of anyone.

It is simply what I chose.

If something here resonates with you, I’d be honored if you shared it with someone who might need it today. Let’s help each other along on this journey. I’m grateful our paths have crossed.

Onward, in hope and solidarity.
Elizabeth

PS: My self-paced Journaling for Grief course is now available. It includes six lessons—audio recordings, written reflections, and journaling prompts—that you can move through at whatever pace feels right. Grief doesn’t follow a schedule, and neither does this course. You can find it here.