Letters to the Editor
AncientAssyrian
Published Letters: 610 Editor's Choice: 51
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He Raised Children -- Who Said Anything About ADULTS?
[Read the article: Once the kids are gone, I don't want them coming back]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]While it doesn't sound as if this father feels particularly warm and fuzzy about his daughters, so what? No one says you have to want to live with your children forever!! When he had children, he had an obligation to house them, feed them, clothe them, and provide medical care. He's done that and more, going above and beyond by sending them to college -- something many parents who "LOVE LOVE LOVE" their kids won't or can't do. This father said if there was an emergency, he'd do the right thing and help his daughters out of a lurch, and he even said he'd help out financially to get her started. WHAT MORE DOES SHE NEED?
The obligation to house, feed, clothe and provide medical care ENDS after childhood, except in an emergency where you step in to help a child out of a jam. Otherwise, once a son or daughter is out of college, they're usually 21 years old, and by every standard (except emotional, perhaps), NO LONGER A CHILD.
And a parent's financial responsibility to a child should end at this point, otherwise, parents are encouraging their "children" to, as adults, turn into dependent pseudo-adults who can't manage their own lives. Parents who think that adult children have some sort of inherent right to return home and become a "dependent" child again are doing their children a HUGE disservice.
Frankly, I've seen far too many of these pseudo-adults return home after college because they are immature, selfish twits who think that the world owes them a living, and their parents owe them a comfortable life. God forbid they get a start-up job and scrimp and save...that's beneath them. They want to start out with a nice apartment, reliable car, great job, nice clothes. They can't take a job that involves making photocopies, but instead think they should have the $60k a year super-job from day one. Or maybe they're just lazy, and want to hang out surfing the web, writing self-indulgent drivel in their blogs, downloading stuff onto their Ipods, going to movies and hanging out at Starbucks.
This father may well be a BETTER parent than all those folks who think that turning adult children into incompetent hangers-on is somehow good parenting.
Mary S., Washington, DC
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There May be a Reason, Not That it Helps
[Read the article: My best friend has let me down for the last time]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I went through a very similar situation a few years back. My mother died, and a friend of 30 years, who was very close to my mother as well, was supposed to drive a few hours to attend the funeral, and to bring another close friend of mine to attend as well. She left a vague voice mail hours before departure telling my other friend she couldn't go, no reason given. So, my two closest friends in the world weren't there at my mother's funeral.
When I got back, she didn't call, and frankly, I was angry, and didn't call her. A year later, I sent a birthday card, and she called me, to tell me her saga. Turns out, she had been drinking heavily at the time my mother died...went on for months, (she told me she was a hard core alcoholic for almost 20 years, and in the past year, had become late-stage). Just a few weeks before she called me, she had gotten out of rehab. She'd checked herself in after ending up in the ER with a 4.0 blood alcohol level. No one had known about her drinking until the end, not me, not her husband, sister, etc.
She has since dedicated herself to rehab and recovery, and is sober, thankfully, but she is very brittle and harsh with everyone, critical, and hypermanic. She doesn't have time for anything other than AA meetings and recovery stuff, doesn't return phone calls most of the time because she's "too busy", doesn't want to hear about anyone else or anything other than herself -- just wants to talk about her own issues, and her alcoholism, and her AA friends. I'm glad for her though, because if this is what she needs to do to stay sober and alive, then she should do it. At least she's alive. It's not easy to come back from the brink of late-stage alcoholism.
So...our friendship has alas, pretty much faded away. It's sad, because we were friends for a long time, but after seeing her through both her parents funerals, and being there for her for 30 years, for her to abandon me during such a crisis has left a deep scar. And she's asked me directly how I felt about her behavior around my mom's death, and I told her how much it hurt, her response was that I'm just being "way too sensitive."
While it's too late for this friendship, it may not be for someone else...
So, I guess this long lament is to say that sometimes, there is a reason for why a "friend" cannot be there for you at a time of crisis.
I'm not saying that the reason itself will salvage the friendship, but it might, and sometimes, it can at least help explain what otherwise can seem unexplainable and heartbreaking.