#2

Dear MIL,
When you look at your grandson do you see your boy?  You must.  He looks like his dad birthed him without any input from me.  Looking at the three of you fills me with contempt and questions.  See I can't look at my son, your grandson, without seeing that little boy that stole my heart and changed my world 22 years ago.  My love for my son taught me about the love of God, and for the life of me I cannot understand how you can have such a beautiful son of your own and not feel the same way.

Pardon me for being so bold as to suggest you don't love him.  Who am I to judge?  Perhaps you can explain...

I won't take the time to recant all the stories of the violence and the mental torment and the emotional abuse. I'm sure I haven't heard them all.   And quite honestly I don't care to hear your side of things.  I don't need to; I live with the aftermath.

I will say you succeeded in creating an incredibly responsible man.  So responsible that he not only took your abuse as a boy, he takes it still as a man and returns to you only his best with none of his hurt.  I live with the hurt. You raised a man that will go through hell and high water for you, receiving nothing in return.  I live with the void.  You taught him to labor to your unyielding specifications with no encouragement.  I live with his dreams deferred.

Your boy is with you now, by your bedside, risking his job, his responsibilities, his health to care for you with no appreciation.  And I will live with remnants of 428 days sobriety destroyed.

I don't blame you for being ill and I don't resent his being with you. That's where he belongs. However, I will never understand you and I pray for the grace to forgive you.  Over the years, despite what I know of your treatment of him, I have only encouraged him to treat you with love and compassion.  My heart tells me that mothers deeply love their sons and that you must feel that for your son regardless of what you choose to display.  It's my brain that doesn't believe.

Each day I choose to act from the heart; with you and your son.  I hope one day you learn to do so as well.
--DIL