Maroc - NEWSDAY.CO.TT - A la Une - 29/12/2025 04:17

Estranged from son

I TRY MY best to probe everything in the doctor’s office except this one. When a comment is made that indicates estrangement, “We haven’t spoken in years – there is some history there,” for example, I scribble, “Estranged from son,” and move on quickly to the next topic. I don’t want to hear about it – or perhaps more accurately, I can’t hear about it. I can talk about kidney failure, heart failure, metastatic cancer, dementia, death, try to explore loneliness, depression, isolation, try to uncover elder abuse, but estrangement? Alas, that is better left buried. The patients don’t want to talk about it either. “How many children do you have? Are you in contact with them? Are they involved?” The mood in the room changes instantly.The patients seem to go into a fugue-like state: they pause, zone out for a brief moment, an awkward silence follows, their brain rattled by the mention, the thought, of their child. The damage has been done; the relationship is irreparable and irretrievable. Patients invariably let doctors in, but this seems to be an exception. They don’t willingly open up – and I don’t probe. There is a mutual understanding that it is not the right time or place to reopen the wound. I am left imagining. Sometimes imagining is better than knowing. What can cause the severing of the parent-child relationship? Of all the relationships that exist among living species, the parent-child one is the strongest. What can be so traumatic to sever such a relationship? Perhaps death is easier to deal with – death is a natural loss. Estrangement seems unnatural. Someone is alive but to another person dead. How can this be reconciled? It can’t. Time does not heal this wound. The tragedy, loss, regret, pain written on the face of the 85-year-old is proof that it does not get easier with time. Since I started practising geriatric medicine a few years ago, I have been struck at how often I encounter estrangement among patients. Research on the issue is limited – it remains buried. In the US, about one in four people report being estranged. In a YouGov survey of Americans, 24 per cent reported being estranged from a sibling, 16 per cent from a parent. When asked which family member they would be willing to reconcile with, 70 per cent said their child. The reverse was not true: 35 per cent said they would be willing to reconcile with their parent. The statistic explains the longing of the 85-year-old in the geriatrician’s office – it is a kind of unrequited love. I don’t know what’s happening on the other side. Perhaps the child has good reason to stay away. There’s always a reason. This relationship does not rupture just like that. Not too long ago, a father and daughter came to clinic. “I don’t know why I am here,” the daughter said. Her father had been an alcoholic all his life. She was estranged from him for most of her adult life, decades. Now he had dementia. He could no longer speak in full sentences. He spoke in short two-word sentences. He needed constant reminding and cueing for basic daily activities. He was living in a dementia care facility. He was living in his own world. Although physically there, he remained distant. Perhaps this is why the daughter reconciled. Dementia made it safe for her to return. The alcoholic was no longer there. The demented man was loveable. But it wasn’t the reason. It had nothing to do with that. “Maybe it’s because I have my own children now,” she said. She made it sound easy and simple, but who knows what storm was raging in her head. Plus, when it comes to old people, nothing is simple. Old people have lived a long time, an ocean has flowed under the bridge, many mistakes have been made, many regrets, many bad decisions, and good ones, too. It is why talking to old people can be revealing. Old people reveal truths about society, about life. Truths are uncomfortable. And the possibility of estrangement is one of those uncomfortable realities. So it is not so much the prevalence of estrangement that makes me uncomfortable. It is the constant reminding of it. Similar to the constant reminding of cancer, heart attacks, strokes. It is no different. What you see happen to others – addiction, mental health problems, death, cancer, dementia – can happen to you too. And estrangement terrifies me. The post Estranged from son appeared first on Trinidad and Tobago Newsday.