Divided family

I do not want to put a dampener on all you lovely GN’ers looking forward and planning a lovely happy Christmas but will you please spare a thought for those of us who have to live (through no fault of our own) with a divided family.

We have three sons - all in their forties and one a grandfather this year. My husband and I only ever lived and worked to make absolutely sure that our boys were brought up in a living, secure and solidly happy family.

Ten years ago our eldest and youngest son became estranged. We do not know the reason, but can imagine the fringes of it. We do not wish to know the cause as it would not help and would probably cause us even more anguish. In any event this is a situation that will most definitely never be resolved.

My husband has approached the son who feels most aggrieved son on many occasions in an attempt to broker some peace but each time this has been violently rejected. We accept this (we have no choice). The other son has never been approached about this. This is an extremely painful situation to us as parents.

Once again the festive season has come around and we have to make two separate occasions to independently get together for Christmas. It is the same for birthdays too. My husband had a most miserable 70th birthday lunch this year with two thirds of the family. There is always one family missing at what should be happy family occasions and the older we get the more painful and sad we become.

Both sons are married lovely girls who have very strong family ties (like I thought we had) and when I hear of how their families are enjoyed, and how our sons get along with in laws etc it makes it even harder for us to bear.

All the joy of Christmas and family times are just stressful and sad to us. Of course we appear to enjoy the time we spend with each side but it is not the same as having an irreparably divided family. Even their respective children never get a chance to meet. We have never even mentioned the fact to our eldest son that we have a beautiful new great grandson this year. I do not believe he nor his wife would be interested in the news.

I know full well families cannot always be happy and united. We would like our sons to be able to be at least civil to each other during family occasions, and to think how their behaviour so drastically affects us and their neutral brother in the middle.