Choose reconciliation over estrangement

When I began writing this story, a saying popped into my mind: “Let the dead past bury its dead.”

I went online and rediscovered that the line is from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “A Psalm of Life.”

But did it apply to what I was writing about?

Virtually everyone I know who has adult children has experienced a period of silence between the parents and one or more of their kids.

I challenge any family to match our record, avoiding the long-form details.

Lee and I were, of course, perfect parents, but over the course of our 45-year marriage, each of our seven children had an extended period of not speaking to us.

Jan, our oldest, and I had a one-year separation, 20-some years ago. For her father’s birthday, he requested that we patch things up. We talked it out and have been close ever since.

Our second and fourth oldest each estranged themselves for two years once, and for more than two since their father died.

The longest-term separations were between us and Cheryl and us and Mark, at seven years each.

Cheryl, our third oldest, living a great distance away at the time, trusted an ill-intentioned source. She decided her father and I were rotten human beings and we were ostracized until she contacted us. Seven years later, she called to say her husband’s mother had died and that John was bringing her ashes to be buried alongside his father’s, in Glendale.

I needed an inspired response.

“Do you think John would like Dad and me to be at the interment?” I asked. “Yes,” she said. Lee and I had a lovely visit with John, and he caught us up on Cheryl and their kids. After that, Cheryl’s family was back in our lives.

Mark, the youngest, was the easiest of all of our children. We had zero togetherness issues until he married the only child of a possessive family who wouldn’t part with them for any reason. Fortunately, in my opinion (not Mark’s), his wife decided that they would be better friends than spouses, which is how we got Mark back.

The next-longest separation, three years, was between us and Tim, our second to youngest. After graduating from college and going to Washington to earn his master’s in chemistry, he fell off the radar. Lee and I discussed hiring a private investigator to find him, but, out of the wild blue, Tim called, and — after this and that — everything turned around again, not counting some glitches.

When third-youngest Bobby married Britt, they were annoyed that Lee and I had remained friends with Bobby’s former fiancée. After two years of missing them, I had a dream about a boy I used to know in grammar school, and when I awoke, I realized that if I didn’t do something soon, Bobby would be “a boy I used to know.” I wrote a letter and the four of us were happy together again.

During the years of our kids’ absences, Lee and I grieved and fretted about what we should do.

So what is the point?

We screw up our kids? No. A few typing errors don’t ruin an entire message.

Periods of estrangement eventually end? Not sure about that one. My brother broke ties with our parents and Carolyn and me more than 40 years ago.

Maybe the point is to be receptive when our kids are ready to reach out, not to rehash things, what Longfellow meant about “the dead past.”

In that poem, he says that life just is what it is. Things aren’t necessarily as they seem from our perspective. We should live our lives in the present, being the best we can be, leaving “footprints on the sands of time” for others who follow. Hard to do. I know from experience.

Carolyn used to say, regarding her kids, that she could “only yodel for so long without hearing an echo.”

Gosh! When I don’t hear an echo, I go straight into panic mode and stay there until I can accept that not every problem is within my power to solve.

Maybe the point is that if we don’t get panicky waiting to hear an echo, we might hear someone else’s yodel.

Author LIZ SWIERTZ NEWMAN lives in Corona del Mar.