Why can’t my mean dad and cold in-laws be better grandparents?

DEAR BEL, MY MOTHER died when I was 13 years old. The emptiness and heartache has never left me. This is the price of love.

I adored her, being with her made me truly happy. I was left with a father who drank, was abusive and did not care about me. I have only seen him four times in 29 years.

Twenty-six years ago, I married a wonderful man and we have three sons. I longed to have my mother’s love and guidance, to share my children’s lives. She’d have been a truly amazing granny.

Sadly, I knew I could never trust my father with my children, so my sons have only seen him three times in their lives — though he felt he had a right to see them.

I have never stopped the boys (all now over 18) from seeing him: they simply don’t want to. He is a stranger, he just happens to be the man who made me. I hoped that

Recently, I read somewhere that most of us have a wound deep within — something never healed which continues to ache, even to bleed, all our lives.

I know what my own is and the awareness helps me understand certain aspects of my life.

For you, the agony of losing your beloved mother was doubled by when I married I would have a strong relationship with my ( d i vorced) mother and father-in-law.

This I yearned for, but that bond did not happen. My in-laws made it very clear I was not good enough for their son.

So when I was pregnant there was no sign of happiness from them. I was given no help and they never made any effort to see their grandchildren.

I have tried to make the relationships work, but no matter what I did, it simply was not good enough.

Please help me understand why unforgivably bad parents think they have a right to access young human lives not created by them? And why some parents, given the opportunity to have a loving relationship with their daughter-inlaw and grandchildren, refuse it? TESS being left alone with a terrible father. Such blows the human soul can never ‘get over’.

your cries of ‘not fair’ must have risen each day to a cold, dark sky — and all the more so as you imagined your mother holding her first grandchild. Oh, so cruel.

no wonder you dreamed of a good relationship with in-laws who might, you hoped, have become parent substitutes. (I feel so lucky to have had such a wonderful relationship with mine.) But more ill fortune was

your lot. it is easy to understand (especially from your uncut letter) why your life has been marked by sadness, even though you have been blessed in your husband.

how unbearable to imagine you with a new, first baby, hoping your husband’s parents would warm to you and be thrilled about the baby — only to be bitterly disappointed once again.

TEss, you ask me two questions i cannot possible answer. in your longer letter you sweetly tell me that my words have given you comfort over many years, which is why i feel inadequate right now.

since the behaviour you describe is alien to me i cannot explain it to you. The three older people you mention (your father and the two in-laws) have zero sensitivity.

At least you have been able to cast off your unworthy father and your sons have full choice in the matter.

My first advice to you is to stop worrying about this. Nothing can be changed so please don’t waste emotional energy asking ‘why?’

Your husband must have wondered what made his parents so remote and i imagine he may have asked them. Or perhaps not — but again, there’s nothing you can do about it, except share your feelings with him.

Perhaps, too, you can offer yourself some sort of explanation by wondering what happened to each of them, to make them like this. More wounds?

Again, your sons are now old enough to make their own judgments, so it is too late for those people to become real grandparents. You may feel your family lost out, but the real loss is theirs.

so i beg you to refresh your memory of the serenity Prayer: ‘God, grant me the serenity to accept the things i cannot change . . .’

EvErYThiNG takes us back to that child of 13 deprived of the only source of love in her life. Perhaps it might help you to write her a letter, reaching back down the years and assuring her that she will survive. That one day she will love and be loved and have three terrific sons — four men in her life who will more than make up for that bad father.

That the mother-love she knew for 13 years (and more) was the most precious of indestructible blessings which would turn her into a wonderful mother herself.

Tell little Tess, at this time of gifts, that the future will bring good things for her, against the odds.

As i am telling you now, grownup Tess, that you must look out for them still.

Look for the light, because you deserve it.