Helping Hand, Healing Touch

Unexpected side effect: forgiveness

Lauren was eight and her brother Doug fourteen when I divorced their father.

Doug, from the age of three, had hated his father (“Dick”) and begged me to divorce him. “Or else I’ll jump off the Empire State Building.”

Ironically, when I finally did so, eleven years thereafter, Doug embraced his dad and turned his rage against me. Doug also cut off my parents and my sister, their offenses being that they were my parents and my sister.

Doug went to live with his father, who’d gone to live with his mother. During her weekend visits, Lauren was Dick and Doug’s dart board by proxy. They hurled accusations of disloyalty: she “sided with” — because she resided with — her evil mother.

Flash forward fourteen years: Dick dropped dead at Doug’s feet. Doug, by then 28, reached out to me sporadically and continued to live with his grandmother, Dora.

Three years ago, Dora — who died last month at 99 — slipped on a step and broke her pelvis, following which she sold her house and moved in with her daughter. Doug, abruptly homeless at age 35, moved in — -surprise! — -with me and Lauren.

Lauren resented Doug’s presence; she tersely greeted him upon his arrival by way of preemptive admonition as regards letting the cat escape outdoors.

In these three years since, Lauren and Doug, at her behest, have barely spoken.

Until last week.

Lauren, devastated at having just received report of rapid progression of her Multiple Sclerosis, came home (presumably) in tears.

Parenthetical insert above is on account that I wasn’t here when Lauren arrived.

Her brother was.

Doug asked her what was wrong. She told him. He offered to help however he could.

For starters, he transported her and the cat to the vet last week; he’s on standby for medical appointments.

Last night, Lauren, somewhat sheepishly, confessed to an unforeseen effect of their “bonding” (her word): twenty-five years of simmering ill-feelings toward her brother had simmered themselves out.