ANGER vs FORGIVENESS

Healing hearts with hope, how can you heal after such devastation, especially with hope, when its feels like such a hopeless place.

I loved my grandparents, but I adored my grandfather. My grandma was a cranky woman, who seemed to always be angry. She wasn't a loving, warm person. As a child I never understood why my grandma was always so mean.

I couldn't wait to be a grandma, I wanted to spoil my grandchildren, I wanted to show them true warmth and love. I wanted them to feel that going to grandma's house was special, a place they felt safe and happy, where their memories would make them feel joy and fill their hearts with warmth. Where a smile would appear when their world got rocky and that grandma's love would always be with them, throughout their lives.

My grandma wasn't at all like this. She just wasn't warm or loving. To describe her I would use words like, Cold, Cranky, Unloving, Angry, Mean, Unhappy, Negative. As a child, I never understood why she was this way. My grandfather was a jolly man, happy, loving, warm, fun, admired and respected, by so many.

As a child, I heard my grandmother yelling at my grandfather all the time and I use to feel so bad for him. She always treated him so coldly. I remember times when my grandfather would try to hug her and she would push him away, using the words, "Leave me alone." What I saw of my grandma's heart, well in a word, Ugly.

When my grandfather passed away in 1982, my grandmother never shed a tear. It was like just another day for her. In fact, she even said to me once, "Good Riddance". They were married 60 years and all she could feel or say was "Good Riddance."

Like I said, I loved my grandfather, to me he was a hero. This man could do no wrong in my eyes, in fact all of his grandchildren felt this way. He was a wonderful man.

Than one day I found out why my grandmother lived in anger, why she lived her life with so much bitterness.

My aunt took me to lunch, my grandmother joined us. I was 26 years old at the time and was going through my first divorce. As we were sitting there talking about my soon to be ex husband, my grandmother made a statement that has stuck with me since. "Men are worthless, they have no value, all they want to do is use you." My 80 year old grandmother, married 60 years, hated men, why, she had such a great husband. Immediately I began defending my grandfather, telling her how lucky she was to have such a wonderful man in her life, how everyone respected and idolized him, what a loving warm man he was.

On that day, which is now forever ingrained in my memory, I truly met my grandfather, the man I adored and admired, wasn't the man that lived in my heart at all. Even today, all these years later, as I write this my heart still breaks.

I heard that day about all my grandfathers girlfriends, how he would support other women financially, take them on trips, spend time with them and some of it was done right in front of my grandmother. I learned how he treated her with such disrespect and discarded. She told me, that throughout their entire marriage she never received one gift, not Christmas, birthday, nothing. My grandfather made decisions and never once asked her what she felt or thought. He would decide they were moving, he would go purchase a house and move, she could either come or stay, he didn't care. I sat there in complete shock. The man she was talking about was not my grandfather. That is not who I knew. If my aunt had not been there that day and acknowledged everything my grandmother said, I wouldn't have believed her. My grandfather was a good man, all of this just couldn't be true.

When I asked my grandmother why she stayed and tolerated it, she reminded me of her generation. Women stayed, even through abuse. She felt it was her duty. She said it began when they were first married and continued for the next 60 years. What could she have done.

I felt sad, heart broken for her. How horrible to be treated that way for so long. How could this wonderful man I knew, be so cruel, so heartless, so mean.

Everyday for 60 years, her spirit died, her anger grew and bitterness became her way of life. Not just with my grandfather but with everyone around her. When she died in 1993, no one stood up to give a eulogy and when asked if anyone would like to share about her life, there was no response, no one stood in her honor. What my grandmother left behind, was this, "I don't want to live like she did, I never want to be a bitter, cold person."

My grandmothers anger destroyed her life, it destroyed any chance of happiness or personal peace and it contaminated her relationship with all the others around her. Her bitterness is how she is remembered today, when others speak of her, I still hear "She was a cold, bitter woman."

How I wish she could have found a way to forgive my grandfather, to open her heart, because I know underneath the pain, she was a loving, warm, caring, beautiful woman that had so much more to offer, especially, those of us who were her family.

Her children, grandchildren and friends were cheated out of knowing the real woman, because she choose anger over forgiveness and Self Love.