Look at their choices as lessons, but do not judge or blame them.
I looked up and around our small dining room. It was a stark contrast from the trajectory of fame and fortune my dad was set on.
What happened?
Empathy: seeing their pain in yourself
A parent’s absence undoubtedly leaves a black hole in their kin’s life. With pain in our hearts, we turn to whoever or whatever may soothe it. That’s where I saw a younger version of my father, at the climax of his career, lost in his addictions and anger at life.
On a visceral level, I understood my parents’ turbulent relationship.
The saying that opposites attract is a half-truth because on the surface, two people may be like apples and oranges but at their core, they are just as bruised. Dad and mom found a way to each other for the perfectly wrong reasons. Both were searching in their own way. Dad grew up without a father. Mom grew up with overreaching parents who were extremely abusive. They both dreamed of finding salvation and were convinced that the union of two lives would make up for their shortcomings.
I found it ironic how two people couldn’t see such a glaring hole in their lives. But then again, I was not saved from making similar mistakes.
After my first relationship, I learned the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Up until then, my choices were a reflection of the implicit messages I learned about a thing I believed to know as love. I chased perfection for approval masked as the antidote. I sought out lovers to help me carry the burden of loving me. How could I ever do it alone?
After many years of chasing my own tail, I learned that the deficiency of love is echoed by reckless attachment to anything or anyone that is a mere means to an end. Nothing will ever fill the cracks long enough.
Tia Irene was wise enough to know this as well. Growing up I knew her to be a rock, always watching over my family whenever my brother and I needed a home while my mom transitioned in and out of hospitals.
During candid conversations, I learned she wasn’t always the outspoken woman who sat before me. On a Summer evening in Guadalajara of 1979, a 17-year- old Irene went out for dinner and a walk with her boyfriend, Ricardo. The two met through the church but kept their blossoming relationship under wraps for fear of their family’s judgment. It wasn’t respectable that a young woman such as Irene went out with young men without the intent of marriage and approval from the church. But teenage Irene wasn’t a conformist. That lifestyle better suited her parents, the neighbors, the church, and anyone who damned to hell as a judging observer, dared to condemn her.
Unfortunately, her beliefs would only protect her outside her parent’s house because from that fated day, her mom quite literally kicked Tia Irene out for her rebellion against the sanctity of marriage.
What shame you’ve brought! Take it with you and never come back.
Her mother would never change in her own rage and bitterness, so Tia Irene walked. The rejection from her family reverberated through late adulthood, where she spent decades taking blows from life and abusive partners like Ricardo.
Everything is a cycle
It’s interesting how a parent’s actions can condemn their child for years, even after their absence. Another 35 years passed before Tia Irene came to grips with the poison she still carried from childhood. It trickled down into her womb, coursed through five innocent lives like a river that every day dragged them away, further and further from love.
After the diagnosis of malignant cancer, Tia Irene was violently shaken awake to the state of her family affairs. No one was coming to save her or her kids from drowning. Accepting her faults as a parent would be the catalyst to immense transformation.
It began with making up for lost time. On upcoming birthdays, she planned the gatherings she missed out on. When she missed her daughters, she invited them over for a homecooked meal, their favorite one. She softened when they confronted her about long-forgotten thorns. And if they didn’t wish to see her, she wished them well regardless over a simple call or text. She respected their timing to heal when her love, though true and warm, felt rough and jagged against their wounds.
“You just keep feeding your love,” she’d say, “there’s no use forcing them to accept it when they’d rather hold onto pain or resentment. No one can point you a finger, because your conscience will be clean.”
Tia Irene’s stories were a balm to the ache I felt internally. Though it would take years for amends to fully integrate among her children, at least she walked out a survivor of cancer and resentment. She broke the cycle.
I sensed she saw parts of herself in me. The truth is I saw myself in all of it and couldn’t help but wonder: why and when?
Why do people inherit discord?
…and…
When does it end?
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This is the second part of a multi-series where I explore family history and the rich, sometimes heartbreaking stories weaved in time. I explore themes of existentialism, destiny, identity, death, and familial inheritance. Check out the first part here!
