Signs of Forgiveness

Signs of Forgiveness

Forget the past

It’s surely gone

All we have is now

It’s best to move on
~ All I Can Do by Juliet A. Wright

copyright 2009, all rights reserved

In my first book, I wrote extensively about my parents and all the defects of character that I developed as a result of the dysfunctional relationships I had with them. In the following story, I reflect on how my recovery has led me to forgive and have compassion for the people who were my parents.

My parents were really into antiques. My mother and father decorated their house with all types of aged items, and they were always looking to add to their collection. It was a passion that they shared together. Part of this collection consisted of some Delft china of my mother’s that used to sit in the corner cupboard of our kitchen. I would see it there as a child but don’t ever remember looking closely at it or taking note of the pictures that were on it. It was just there in my home with me, along with the cigarettes left on the saucer by mistake and the Stoli’s vodka that was in the teacup in the corner.

Through the course of my tumultuous childhood, resentments built up inside of me. I suffered neglect at the hands of my mother, who was rarely there for me emotionally or spiritually. I had a lot of anger towards her for drinking and blamed her for almost everything. My father was in his power-hungry mode, and he had a desire for control, money, and women — all of that really turned me off too. So I decided that I wanted to run away from all of that and not participate in it. I didn’t want to have any part of it. I took pride in the fact that I didn’t want anything from them, not their money, value system, social life, antiques, or memories.

But over the course of time, experience, recovery, and taste, I’ve grown to really like antiques and country style. In fact, I did like some of my mother’s things. So when she moved out to California to live near my sister, I got some of her copper collectibles, and when she passed away, I decided I would like her Delft. Still, it sat in her storage unit for a really long time.

I remember Mom saying when she moved to California that she wanted to keep her Delft. Yet she didn’t want to get it out of the boxes and set it up on her new hutch, because it was just too sad. I couldn’t understand that. It is just china. What’s the big deal? I thought. Maybe it reminded her of the family farm and how my sister and I sold it so she would have to move and live a less isolated, safer life in town, but I didn’t know. What’s the matter with her? Whatever.

After my mother passed away, I did have the Delft shipped from California to my home in Vermont. I took it out, set it up, and looked at it. It has ships on it. Then it hit me. Oh my gosh, that is the reason it was so sad for her.

My father grew up as a sailor on Lake Michigan. Sailing was his thing. After my folks got married, they would sail together. They would compete in sailboat races, and they also invited friends to be on the boat to party. The five-o’clock-cocktail-hour crowd spent many hours on the decks of that boat. It was like a status thing for her. I really don’t think she was that fond of sailing, I think it kind of scared her. But she did it to make him happy and to be with him. She was fond of the status and how it made her appear to other people. That represented them, that boat. So I thought, Oh, that’s it. Mom was a hopeless romantic. Yet that God of my father had failed her. That is why it was so sad because she realized that he wasn’t true to her and the romance had died. Then he died. Poor Mom, I thought. I wouldn’t want to get up and look at those memories every day either. That would be like hanging pictures in my cabin of Alex and me snuggling at the movies and having to get up every day with them staring me in the face. That would be enough to make me go back to bed and pull the covers over my head for the day. I got it.

So Mom was a hopeless romantic. How about that!

This is a sign of forgiveness, that I can look with compassion on her and say, Poor Mom, I understand. Her world was collapsing and she reacted to it by self-medicating. She just couldn’t stand it. I have empathy for her.

I recently purchased and watched two movies that I enjoyed a lot. The first one was called Valley of the Dolls. This movie focuses on the dark side of the entertainment industry, on the addiction to pills that was prevalent during the late 60s.

The second movie was called Sideways. This movie looks at issues of love, career setbacks, and friendship, along with huge amounts of wine consumption.

As far as Valley of the Dolls goes, when it came out in 1967, Mom was probably on “dolls” (what they call the drugs the actresses take in the movie). That is subconsciously what I believe my attraction is to all of that. Sideways interested me because I lived with alcoholism and I am trying to understand it. There is part of me that’s trying to understand how someone could live like that. Mom probably couldn’t get up without a doll or go to bed without a doll. Plus she was drinking on top of it. I’ll bet that is what happened. Thank you, God. I’m not going through this to lay blame. I’m just trying to figure it out.

Gaining a greater understanding of my parents is a sign of recovery for me. These stories are definite signs of forgiveness.

Another sign of forgiveness is that I can now remember the good things about my father, like how much he loved a good comedy. I can still experience him laughing at The Carol Burnett Show, especially the bits with Tim Conway. Peter Sellers and the Pink Panther movies would also send him over the edge with laughter. He loved James Bond movies and was mesmerized by the film Ben-Hur. Being an actor himself, he would rewind the tape, reviewing every single facial expression, vocal inflection, and expertise in timing, which made him admire the actor he was watching even more. He would especially laugh loudly at his own jokes. Dad had a good sense of humor. There was goodness in him. I remember that.

My father also had moments of shared compassion, reassurance, and empathy. I remember him mailing me a letter that I received upon my return to the University of Miami, in Coral Gables, Florida, after my sister Alice’s Miss Vermont Pageant. He had written me a letter of support. I thought I had flunked my senior jazz guitar improvisation midterm exam with scary Antonio because he had said that a few people had choked on the exam. So naturally I thought Antonio meant me. I was devastated and was crying and was sure life as I knew it was over. (A fine example of “all or nothing” catastrophic thinking.) Dad wrote me a nice letter saying, “The world is not going to end. It will go on. You will be fine. Don’t worry about it.” Things had gotten really weird with Alex on that trip to Vermont too. We had parted on unsettled terms, so I was feeling extra fragile. So that letter from my father helped.

My mother was a fantastic actress and dancer. In her younger years, she was a knockout. She was also known around our hometown, by some, to be a real lady. Everything in her outfit matched — her purse, shoes, everything, even the color she painted her nails. I never experienced this part of Mom, but that is what I’ve been told. I did watch her act in the musical Mame and was blown away. She was excellent. It seemed that she was born for the stage. She too loved a comedy. She was a Frasier addict. Good for her.

I can remember these good things about my folks when I look at the Delft.
So the Delft sits on my door-less kitchen shelves. I bought those fancy plate hangers that make the plates stand up so you can see them clearly. The ships keep my kitchen afloat on the ocean of faith and hope. Every time I look at these dishes, I think of her and I think of him.

I have pictures on my piano of them as young people. They were just starting out. They had their whole lives before them and the whole world by the tail. They were beautiful, beautiful people trying to make it before everything got messy. It was their best moment. Now I hold these pictures of them in my mind. This is how I remember them. This is forgiveness. It is recovery. I am grateful.

What things did I do to get to a place of forgiveness?

• I did 4th Step inventories as per Co-Dependents Anonymous Step 4:

Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.^[1]

(I discuss inventories earlier in this book. I also cover the spiritual principle of forgiveness in detail later in this book.)

Through the inventories, I told the stories, and I got them out of me. I told how it felt going through these situations.

• I changed the behaviors that didn’t work for me and built in new recovery behaviors.
• I journaled and worshiped and talked to a sponsor.
• I told God and gave it to Him.
• I shared at meetings and listened to others.

Through all these practices, I grew as a person, did my amends, and came to a place of forgiveness. That is recovery.

^[1] Co-Dependents Anonymous. Co-Dependents Anonymous. Dallas, TX: CoDA Resource Publishing, 2009, p. iv.