Residual Forgiveness
I just returned from a long visit with my parents and I left with unresolved grief and contemplative questions for myself about forgiveness.
My mother and father are both in their 80’s, both are declining in health, both have separate but serious illnesses and both are refusing any extra medical intervention. I deeply respect their decision on this.
As the days and hours moved along slowly in the house with my parents, I whizzed around them and their daily routines. Trying to figure out where I could wedge myself in to help and anticipating what they needed. In between helping I found my thoughts fluttering to forgiveness and forgetfulness.
My parents’ memories are fading, my mother more than my father. Although her long-term memory seems somewhat intact.
There is a lot of reminding that happens. A lot of questions that get asked again and again.
“Did you eat?”
“Did I take my medicine?”
“What day is it?”
As I watched both my parents vacillate between deep presence and forgetfulness, I was struck by my own internal, egoic, fear about them forgetting our dynamics, our roles in this family, our stories, and the differences that had defined our relationship over the past two decades.
I was confronted with the truth that I would be the only one left holding onto the past.
I’ve had a strained relationship with my parents since my divorce and departure from the Catholic Church and I’ve written and spoken about this many times. This is no secret.
My mother took my choices the hardest and before her memory began to fade she took many opportunities to guilt and shame me for my decisions. The most hurtful, at one point telling me that I was a disappointment to her and our family.
I’ve done so much therapeutic work in my adulthood around letting go of the past, recognizing the limitations of my parents and other people in my life. I’ve learned the depth of what I can and cannot control. I’ve practiced tolerance and acceptance on levels I didn’t even know I had the capacity to, and it’s freed me in so many ways.
Still, in my parents old, musky, house I could hear a small, egoic voice in my mind wondering…
“Who we are—if we are the only ones left carrying the past with us? The hurt with us? The pain with us?”
I was surprised to hear this voice and feel the fear it felt around fully releasing these stories that had defined us. Defined the last decades of our lives.
I had to sit with this question and its discomfort.
I thought about how unfair it seemed for me to hold within my heart any ill will against my aging parents who have moved on, albeit without their memory.
I kept thinking that even though my parents’ health decline has been slow moving and sort of like watching a car accident in slow motion, where you can see the outcome but you can’t intervene.
“Well, we don’t’ have much more time…so what was this all about?” I thought.
This internal protestation of being left with a bag residual unforgiveness? And why was a part of me still holding on? Why was there this weak voice, fearing the death of an old story and old identity?
When I sat with myself, silently on my old twin bed in my parents’ home, I tried imagining in the distant future sitting at their respective funerals and still holding onto the remaining residual hurt and unresolved pain. I couldn’t imagine it. It felt gross and not like me at all.
In my introspection, I was most surprised that there was residue.
Hadn’t I let all of that go years ago? Hadn’t I learned that the deep resolution and my need to been seen and heard in my pain by parents would never come? Hadn’t I accepted everything? Still, I could sense there was a small pang of pain that was in this moment keeping me separate from my parents.
In the healing journey, this happens often when we come on the other side of our alchemic journey and we find there is still a deeper level to dive, a little more to give, and certainly more to let go of. It always surprises me. It surprised me now, as I sat in quiet solitude to hear my ego once more yearn for forgiveness, again.
Could I leave all the stories here, in this house?
Could I change again?
Could I forgive?
Could I forget?
Could I let go, again?
The answer was first I had to forgive myself. For still needing to be validated. I had to forgive myself for wishing I could hear specific things from my parents that could comfort me and wash away the hope of resolution and stain of residual pain I’ve been carrying around. I had to acknowledge and forgive myself for craving so much from my parents at the end of their lives.
Forgiveness is a choice and its tangible. It’s real. It’s heavy. It isn’t always easy to do. It isn’t something that can be insincerely given, because the debt of not forgiving always comes to collect.
My parents, who grew up in the 1940’s, children of depression era parents who were just trying to survive, who didn’t give much credence to emotions and speaking about your feelings. Or even having respectful dialogue, when there are differing opinions. Never really wanted to talk about anything, with me. So most of what’s left between us, that requires forgiveness will continue to go unspoken. My parents, to no fault of their own sweep things under the rug. There’s been so much sweeping under the biggest rug in my family.
Even as I forgive myself, I am cognizant of my own imperfections and limitations in the confines of my family structure. As I’ve learned more, I’ve done better in my interactions, but early on in my split from my family I was a wounded animal for a long time and lashed out to defend and protect myself. Finally, leaving and isolating mostly, to survive. This isolation, something most of my family still cannot understand even if we could talk about it.
I will never know how my decisions and actions felt to my parents, even if I knew I was doing the right thing for myself. All I know is their reaction to it, but never their true and honest rationale behind how they treated me. I know I have hurt them, even if it was not consciously or intentionally—or in defense of my own personal sanity and safety. For that I have always been deeply sorry.
When I left my religion of origin, one of my own internal edicts was to never harm another person intentionally or unintentionally. Its no wonder that I found myself to the teachings of the Buddha. I kept thinking early on in my spiritual awakening, how I just didn’t want to feel hurt by hurting myself or others. I knew that pain and suffering would be inevitable (the teachings of the Buddha never lets you forget this). I set out to relinquish as much in myself so I didn’t have to contribute to the collective pain and suffering of those around me, by my actions or thoughts. I wanted to take deep, conscious personal responsibility for hurting myself and the collective, and promise to not do it intentionally or unconsciously.
It was clear to me at the end of this reflection, in my parents house that even if there was just a minuscule amount of forgiveness that needed to be given, I had to give it. Now. Otherwise, I am injuring myself and my parents.
That we are truly running out of time with one another and that nothing should get in the way of us loving each other all the way to the end of the their human experience.
They say when we die, that we automatically know everything, at all once. They also say, that the concept of time is not a constraint when you are on the other side and souls can see and witness time forward and backwards simultaneously. I hope that when my parents cross over and can see everything, that it will all make sense to them. That we all just did the best we could, with the human tools we had. And that we tried our very best to love one another in our own way.
As I sat with letting go of my final microscopic residue of forgiveness, I kept seeing my parents energetic souls lifting upwards towards golden, bright lights. I imagined them connecting back to me here on Earth energetically and in their all knowingness, they could see that there was only love left here for them. Between us. For us. Forever.
That felt like true forgiveness to me.
