I have written a few times about how three of my four children have ostracized me because I eventually rejected the religious cult in which their mother and I originally raised them. Thus, I am considered a heretic or an apostate and therefore, by fiat, I am to be treated as a “leper” by all, including family, who follow the creeds of that cult.
I achingly miss my children and their children; it has been years since my children have spoken to me or since I have hugged their children. I have been hoping — hoping, that they will somehow, at sometime, someway change their mind and let me be their “father” and they, my “children”.
But hope can be both a source of strength or source of angst. I used to hope that the three who have rejected me would escape and come to embrace me once again so that I can do what fathers and grandfathers do to those they love. But I do not hope anymore. I give up; I surrender to hopelessness. George Bernard Shaw once asserted, “He who has never hoped can never despair.” I no longer want to despair and grieve; to hope for what will never happen. I want the pain of despair to stop. The only bright spot is that my youngest son has not turned down that path of rejecting me and for that I am beyond elated and joyful. His love stops me from bleeding out.
Freidrich Nietzsche explained,“Hope is the worst of evils, for it prolongs the torments of man.” Hope may not be the worst of evils, but it certainly stands tall against many of them. So, given that my children [except one] refuse to answer my frequent texts, calls or letters, I will no longer despair. I will no longer hope because to keep hope alive is tantamount to keeping a dead horse alive. How foolish and futile – because the horse is “dead”.
carlespiemaryalice 