Breaking the Chain
My journey to exile and back
The letter leaped out of the stack of mail that I carried in, landing on the counter. As I went for it, I sensed something was off. My “Spidey senses” tingled in trepidation, alerting me with certainty that this was no ordinary letter. It was a soldier of fortune on a mission to fulfill its dark destiny, and in mere days, it would leave pain and destruction in its wake.
This was a chain letter instructing me to send copies with tea towels to the top five people on the list, then add my name to the bottom so that, if no one broke the chain, I would be the recipient of — surprise! — tea towels, delivered in the mail.
Ugh! I thought, flashing to memories of other girl games, like “Secret Santa.” No…just no!
I scanned the names on the list, recognizing a distant relative, then in the number five spot, my grandmother.
Going to Walmart to purchase the kitchen towels and mailing envelopes, addressing the envelopes, printing out letters, and then (the worst part, by far) nominating five friends into the scheme seemed like too gruesome of a task to ask of me. I recently gave birth to my third child and resumed my full-time job. Life was already challenging.
When my mother asked in an email if I had received Grandma’s letter, I told her, “I don’t do chain letters.”
Her reply came back through an urgent phone call, warning me to rethink my decision. And so, the war began.
My chosen strategy? I was more than miffed. I wrote back an email disclosing my battle plan to my mother. I would recruit a team of women from my office to help me stuff hundreds of envelopes with tea towels and bomb my grandma’s mailbox. She’d be pelted with tea towels for weeks.
I confess I was venting and got a bit snarky. I’m a writer, a warrior with words and a powerful imagination. Would I have executed the plan in battle? That I will never know.
My mom’s email was breached by my grandfather, lurking on the perimeter with mom’s password and login. He spied on her every bit of correspondence to keep “in the know” on her business.
This infiltration spiraled to Gram pulling the nuclear option.
After verbally machine-gun blasting me over the phone, I was dead to her. My deadness was confirmed by her return of a letter I sent two weeks later, an apology that included photos of the kids, unopened. That twist of her knife severed my heart.
My family and I were black sheep in exile, a status that lasted for three solid years.
There was no exchange of photos, gifts, or birthday wishes for the kids, and we were excluded from all invitations. My mother served as a reticent middleman, like a compliance officer disclosing only minimum necessary information to any inquiries from either party.
Some degree of relief accompanied being freed from visitation duties. I no longer had to prepare to navigate unexpected landmines in conversations. I didn’t have to endure my grandfather’s tongue clicks and winks as if we agreed with his unspoken judgments of other family members.
But there was sadness, too. Pap and Gram were my kids’ only living great-grandparents.
Conditional love is one chain I’d like to break. But I struggle with it, too, and I realize it is a form of self-preservation. It comes from fear and hurt, from needing to push away the villain and pull out the darts in a cold, dark, private cave.
Not knowing if there would ever be a reconciliation, I sought to make peace with what was. I found a group class that I joined for a one-day retreat around the Deeksha blessing. Near the end of the day, the group gathered in a circle, connecting hands and synchronizing breaths in a Tabata rhythm. We pumped air in and out of our lungs, much like hyperventilation. Then, a short break of deep breathing and two more rounds.
Magical chimes tinkled in the background, and I felt high on oxygen. We sat in separate spaces around the room, and one woman began sobbing. I intended to reunite with Gram, if not in this life, then to know that we had made our peace somewhere in another dimension.
As I tried to imagine connecting with my grandma’s heart, she came forward as a girl, about the age of ten. I knew that her mother had passed away then. Gram was the youngest of eight children, and after her mother’s death, she dropped out of school to tend to chores on the farm.
Buffeted by a sudden wall of fear, I recognized Gram’s unprocessed grief for her loss. The wall loomed like a skyscraper, casting a shadow over us.
Having focused the day on karma, dharma, and oneness, I felt ready to slay this dragon. I squeezed Gram’s hand, much like she did mine on our trips to the mall when I was a girl. “I’ll go with you,” I whispered.
Perspiration trickled down my forehead, and tears welled in my eyes. As I imagined walking with Gram into her fear, I felt the bigness of her pain, which seemed to be everywhere. I was filled with empathy for her suffering, for the little girl who felt abandoned, betrayed, unloved, and unlovable. Like an electric tide, compassion flooded my being, and I buzzed inside like I was a living electrode of love.
The enormous pain went from everywhere to nowhere. The wall had disappeared.
My eyes popped open, and I settled into a feeling of freshness like a storm cleared out.
I said my thanks for the gift of understanding, knowing that I could be okay with what was and whatever would be.
Time pushed forward, and my two oldest became teenagers. But one day, Grandma called. We chatted warily at first, but then I realized the past was being swept under the rug, and we should proceed as if nothing ever happened. Mom — an only child who survived a former parental estrangement — knew how Gram’s cogs turned. She confirmed this was to be considered the olive branch.
I had about a decade with Gram before she passed away at 91. Occasionally in my scrambles to find a file on Dropbox, I’ll see a document titled “Dear Gram.” I picked up my weekly letters after her “let’s put this behind us” call, sending details of good recipes I’d made, the beauty of the forest on my bike rides, and whatever news I had about the family.
The best way to break the chain of conditional love can be to remember that everyone is doing their best from where they stand. Our invisible walls of fear can seem so real, but when grace gives us understanding, healing is inevitable.
