My sister started a Best Friends Forever Club (BFF). We had our second meeting last night. We’re all in our fifties. I’ll be sixty in September. We’re also related: me, my sister, my sister-in-law, and my cousin-in-law. I don’t know if cousin-in-law is the proper title.
As with many women’s groups I’ve been a part of in the past, we ugly cried and laughed until we couldn’t breathe. It was wonderful, and we felt much closer when it was over. We talked about our dad who was killed in Vietnam, our step-dad who died a few years ago, Granny and why she picked on us, about our grandfather who was a hoot, our experiences with religion, and numerous other topics.
During our discussion about Granny, I experienced a sea change. We exhausted the ways Granny tormented me. I thought I forgave her a few years ago, but there were times when I talked about her that I picked that resentment up again and felt it all over. While we talked, I had a little “Ding!” in my head. It said, “Granny was sexually abused too. She kept it a secret until she was 77 years old. She knew I was sexually abused, maybe she targeted me in reaction to her pain.” I thought about it long after the BFF Club ended. I thought maybe she had PTSD too and targeted me with self-hate. I felt the door to my Granny resentment close ever so slowly and then shut, like a fire burning for over fifty years that suddenly sputtered and went out.
It hasn’t even been twenty-four hours yet, maybe I’ll have more to say in the future. It is anticlimactic to say that this experience felt simple, like a lock clicking into place, and the world has been righted into its proper place. It reminds me of the ending to T.S. Elliot’s poem, The Hollow Men.
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.