Never Got to Say Goodbye

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It was a late summer day. Goldenrod and asters were coloring the hill. The days were growing short, the birds were gathering in flocks, and there was a feeling in the air that school would be starting soon.

                                                — From Betsy-Tacy by Maud Hart Lovelace 

Grace with flowers

When you tell a child her father is evil and that she should hate him you're telling her that everything she once thought to be true about a person she loves more than anyone, was wrong, and that she was wrong. And in a short period of time, the bond she once had with her father will be severed, the effects of this will negatively affect her the rest of her life, and in the end, she'll hate herself.

"I thought I was right about Dad. How could I have been so wrong? I can never trust myself again."

And she won't trust herself again. She may never trust anyone again. And every day she'll see something that reminds her of her father but she'll painfully ignore it because it feels so horrible -- because she feels so horrible about what happened . So horrible, in fact, that she won't be able to think about her father anymore. She won't want any reminders of him because they'll be reminders of the saddest, most terrifying thing that's ever happened to her. She's horrified about what happened to her father and about what she's supposed to think about him, and she can never see him again. He's dead to her.

"Something happened to him, and then a big part of me died too, and I had to let go of all those memories I had of him, which was most of my past. I was so stupid not to see this! I was sure Mom was wrong. I have to be the most stupid person in the world. I don't ever want to tell anyone about this. Let's never talk about this again."

And she won't talk about it again. I know Grace. She won't talk about things that bother her much anyway – she often avoids these things. And she won't talk about this because her confidence is now undermined and she'll no longer feel safe letting anyone question her — something she had always done before but won't now. She's hurt more than we can imagine. And as the maligned parent, it's hard to imagine she could be experiencing anything like I am: the worst pain I've ever had, lasting longer than any pain I've ever had. It's why parental alienation is called the sickest of the abuses.

The trauma associated with her experience will be nearly impossible to heal because she's lost her trust in people – especially adults, and especially her parents. And anytime she learns something new – no matter what it is – that nagging memory of the time she found out she was wrong about the biggest thing in her life will haunt her. She'll no longer believe she's as smart or as capable as she once was, tremendously affecting her ability to do almost everything else in her life. And she'll avoid anything she thinks might cause similar pain, but she won't know that is — she'll just remember the hurt associated with trust and never know the answer to the big question she'll always live with:

"Why didn't I see this? How could I not have?"

The moment she lost her dad will be the biggest event in her life not made any easier by what was said about him or by being told he didn't love her anymore. Like all children who think a parent doesn't love them, she'll think it's her fault.

"Why did he quit loving me? Why does he still love Josie, but not Mary and me? What did we do?" she'll ask the mother.

And this will have to be answered with even bigger lies, until the day she finds out she was lied to about him. But by then it will be too late for her to have any relationship with her father.

.   .   .

In Josie's little note to me (Josie and the Dogs), she writes that her mom wanted her to believe there was something wrong with her if she got any enjoyment out of being with me. She almost didn't catch this ploy for what it was, and for a moment even considers whether it might be true before she's, once again, forced to do the thing that makes her feel "kooky" — try not to think about any of it.

"If I believe Mom, I'll hurt Dad. But If I don't believe Mom, she'll get mad at me."

This twisting and turning of children's emotions inside and out is nothing less than severe emotional abuse. It creates such a huge shift in their world that it physically affects them. The only world they've ever known is suddenly cracked in two leaving them in such a state of distress that they can no longer function the way she once could. It's the most painful thing they'll ever experience. Worse than death. We all know this. And we also know that these children, while trying to avoid anything similar in their future, will bring into the their own families these same dysfunctional dynamics without even realizing they're doing this. It's a cycle that keeps repeating from one generation to the next.

My girls have all learned to avoid talking about their feelings now— the one thing I tried to model for them so they might grow up with some emotional stability in a world that seems to be less stable all the time. We're all terribly hurt from this. They lose their father. I lose my children — both of us cast out of each other's lives and damaged by something neither of us did.

Love You Googleplex

My relationship with Grace ended soon after my relationship with Mary did. It died out once I was no longer able to see her and was no longer able to balance the negative views she was being fed about me with the truth of who I really was. The less she saw me, the more she hated me — something that can only be understood and is only possible when a child is separated from a parent and living in an environment where that parent is being constantly disparaged. After a while she was no longer able to hold these two opposing views of me in her head, and like all children in positions like this, she had to let go of the father she loved and replace him with the image of a father she was supposed to hate. There was nothing I could at that point but sit by helplessly and watch her slip away — my presence in her life being only a painful reminder of the turmoil she was trying to run away from.

At first, I tried to reason with her about what was happening to her. I tried to talk to her about how, like with Mary, she too was a victim of the bad-mouthing and the lies she was told about me. But she was different now and her defenses prevented me from getting close to her. She was cold and distant and not at all the Grace I had raised or even known a few months earlier.

Something had dramatically changed in the way she now saw me, and we couldn't talk about the most important topic at the forefront of both of our minds: our relationship. Her thinking was now the victim, and even though she had always prided herself on her thinking, this topic was no longer on the table. 

That selfless honesty, which was once a hallmark of her personality, had been replaced with the impossibility of any honest reasoning on her part, at least in regards to me. She was as alienated from herself as we were from each other. I was no longer the father she had known, and Grace didn't know how to think about this except to not think about it. In a mere matter of weeks, we had grown light-years apart.

.    .    .

Only a year earlier she and I were having one of our typical great times together — the kind only Grace and I ever had. We were tossing a juggling ball back and forth in my living room, while talking about life and all kinds of things and laughing and asking each other questions, when she suddenly stops, gives me a hug, and says:

"I really love hanging out with you, Dad. We have so much fun together."

"I know, Grace. I feel the same way."

"You know, this might sound kind of weird, but I really love my brain. Isn't that funny? I was thinking about this the other day, though, how I love how it comes up with all these ideas and makes me think about so many things and ask myself so many questions.  And I love you Dad."

"I love you too Grace. I love you googleplex."

.    .    .

Those days were gone, though, and no matter how hard I tried to re-kindle our relationship during that summer of 2011, I never had any luck.

On a typical afternoon that summer, I rode my bike over to her mom's house to see her. Her mom's boyfriend's pickup was parked out front and the lights were on in the house. I knocked on the door, looked through the little window in the door, and saw Grace. When she noticed it was me, a look of fear came over her.

"What do you want?" she said.

"I want to see you, Grace."

Her mom appears and opens the door.

"What are you doing here?"

"I came over to see Grace."

Grace moves closer and I say Hi to her.

"Hi Dad."

"Grace, I'd like to talk to you. We haven't seen each other for weeks."

"I can't talk right now. I'm too busy doing homework."

"But Grace, I just want to see you for a few minutes. It's been forever since we've even seen each other. What's going on?"

I turn to her mother, "Can you tell me what's happening over here with Grace?"

"She says she doesn't want to see you."

"I know, but can't you help us work this out? Something is seriously wrong over here."

"She obviously doesn't want to talk to you so you should leave?"

"But I want to see Grace. She's my daughter and I hardly see her anymore. What's going on with Grace and Mary anyhow?"

"I don't know. You'll have to ask them. I don't want you coming over here anymore, and if you don't leave I'm going to call the police."

"For what?"

Grace then grabs the door, slams it in my face, and screams, "I hate you," at me.

Never Got to Say Goodbye

The last time I saw Grace was in August of 2011. My girlfriend was in town visiting and I suggested we drive over to see if Grace would like to go out for ice cream. We drove over to her mom's house, and while my girlfriend waited in her car, I walked up to the house and knocked on the door. Grace and her mom both came to the door.

"Grace, would you like to come out with Paula and me to get ice cream?" I asked her.

She got extremely angry with me:

"Dad, why are you harassing me? Why are you doing this to me?"

This is how she saw the situation. My invitation to her to get ice cream was seen as me harassing her. Part of me knew she had no choice but to see it this way, and yet another part of me wanted to confront this misconception of my intentions.

"Grace, I only asked you if you wanted to get ice cream. I'm not harassing you."

"You know what you're doing," she replied while her mother watched.

She then asked me if she could go out to the car to talk to my girlfriend. She knew Paula well. Later Paula told me what Grace said to her.

"Why did you bring him over here? Why are you guys doing this to me? He only wants to harass us!"

Grace came back into the house and stood next to her mom. Her mom, then, once again, told me she was going to call the police if I didn't leave.

"Why would you call the police? What am I doing?"

"You're harassing us."

Grace slammed the door in my face. It was the last time I saw her.

.    .    .

In October of that year the worst news came. One evening I went over to her mom's house again to see Grace. When I noticed she wasn't home, I called her. I had my caller ID turned off so she answered her phone and told me she was at school and couldn't talk. A couple of minutes later I got a call from her mom:

"What do you want?

"I want to see Grace."

"Well there's something I have to tell you. Grace has requested that you have no further contact with her."

My heart sank.

"What are you talking about?"

"Grace doesn't want to see you anymore."

"Is this Grace's decision or yours?"

"It's her decision."

She hung up, and I cried all the way back to my apartment.

 

For two weeks, I couldn't do anything by lay in bed. I didn't want to do anything else. I didn't want to go on living. Grace was now gone from my life like Mary was, and I couldn't bear this. And even though I knew my relationship with Grace was probably coming to an end, I wanted to believe it would be different with her. I thought she might get away like Josie did. But she didn't, and I haven't seen her since that day in August of 2011 when I asked her to have ice cream with me.

A few days later, I emailed her mother to tell her that I still had Grace's things at my house and to see if Grace wanted them. I still had all of her clothes, personal items, books, toys and dolls from her childhood, the dream catcher she made that was still hanging above her bed, science projects and crafts we'd made together, and all the other things she'd accumulated from a lifetime of growing up at my house. And as odd as it sounded, I really wanted to know if she wanted her things now that we weren't going to see each other again.

I then asked her mom something else. I asked her if I could say goodbye to Grace, and I meant this too. I honestly wanted to tell her goodbye because I knew I probably wouldn't see her again. I never got a reply to my email.

This is difficult for me — that's true — but I try to remember that it's even more difficult for Grace. I also try to remember that her rejection of me is really a rejection of a part of herself — a part that she can't understand or deal with because it never existed in the first place. It's anxiety created in this little girl by someone else for that person's personal needs. And it's an anxiety Grace now has to live with and deal with for the rest of her life. Pushing me away is her attempt to push away a memory of me that she can't possibly make sense of because it doesn't square with any reality she's ever witnessed. How could she understand this. How could any child?

I can only hope that some day some trusted adult might reach out to her and help her understand the truth about what happened to us. Unveiling these secrets may not be easy, but then truth isn't always easy, and secrets seldom stay hidden — they often reappear later in our lives in a different form, and Grace shouldn't have to live with this. She deserves better.

She deserves to have an emotionally stable life free from the turmoil that was imposed upon her. She deserves to know she's not alone in the world. And she deserves to know she's a worthwhile, lovable person with father who loves her immensely. She needs to know all of these things before it's too late so neither of us will ever have to say goodbye.

Picture Grace drew of us holding hands