Empty Nest, Full Heart, Lost Connections

We always imagined retirement would be filled with time with our grandkids. I was a stay-at-home mom who went back to work when the boys went off to college. After giving up my military career to raise them, I needed to find a new career once they were out of the house. By then, I thought I’d be having sleepovers with the grands and spending Saturdays doing crafts with them.

I had big dreams of spending time with my grandchildren just as I had with my own boys. I turned one of the guest bedrooms into a special room for the grands, so I always assumed that they would be here. Once they moved out, I kept the room just as it was for two years. Sadly, in those two years, they never came to visit once. To protect my mental health, I redecorated the room. I was tired of passing by and being reminded of the four months they lived with us.

It’s now been two years and three months without contact or a visit, which just confirms I made the right decision to redecorate the room. Coming to terms with estrangement is very difficult, but embracing reality helps one heal. I still struggle with WHY my son and his wife cut us off.We have never been given real answers other than we are annoying and our social media is disturbing. 

I’ve done some research, and most sources list the top three reasons for adult child estrangement as: divorce, addiction or mental illness, and estrangement due to their spouse. It is estimated that one in four families is dealing with some sort of estrangement.

Divorce is a difficult situation for the entire family. Often times, kids are caught in the middle of the parents and their conflict. This can be exacerbated when the in-laws or other family members get involved and either knowingly or unknowingly contribute to the alienation of the divorced parents from their children.

Addiction and mental illness are on the rise. Especially with the legalization of marijuana and other THC-containing products. Often times, parents initiate the estrangement by kicking the child out of the home or seeking hospitalization.

The child’s spouse can contribute to the estrangement by either demanding the adult child end contact with his or her parents. Often the spouse dislikes the parent who is alienated. This could be a personality conflict or due to some perceived criticism.  In times past, the man could sway his wife against her parents, but in recent times there has been a dramatic shift in daughters-in-law taking control and causing no contact between the son and his mother.

There is a great blog post written about the Daughter In Law Cult that helped me to understand a little bit of what might have happened with my son. I’ll/we will never know because they cut off all communication and refuse to have any type of conversation. For a while they would text horrible things and I finally told them these types of conversations need to be had in person and not via text. That’s when we woke up to a flurry of text messages and it all ended.

That’s another thing that perplexes me- the unwillingness to have an actual conversation. Is it emotional immaturity and an inability to communicate? I think that Gen Y millennials grew up using technology and have the inability to have a face to face conversation. Oddly enough, I have noticed the phone in the hand of our daughter in law almost constantly while she derides me for my social media use. She blocked me from her IG account with over 40k followers. She’s an influencer and sells handmade products.

The hypocrisy is really bold, in my opinion. But here we are. I often wonder if they will regret their choices one day. Do they ever think of the parents they cut off? What do they tell the children who remember their grandparents? We may die never knowing what our grandkids know of us. We may live to see the day the grands are able to contact us. I hope for the latter and dream of the day I am able to reconnect with the grands I know and meet the ones I do not.

~Evelyn