My parents were ‘good people, parents and grandparents’. They were from the time of my marriage at the age of twenty-two effectively parents to my children’s mother (her mother and father had passed away). 

My parents were also caring, supportive and committed grandparents to my brother’s family (two children from Toronto) and my family (three children living in Kitchener-Waterloo). Our families spent Christmas together at my home or my brother’s home every year after I was married and had children.

I cannot recall a cross word with my mother until my separation years. I was very close to my father. 

If we are fortunate to experience becoming a father and grandfather, we have accumulated a set of experiences that have shaped the person we have been for most of our adult life; mixed in to the set of ‘normal’ life experiences are a few that have changed us in a profound way.

My separation at the age of 46 fell into the profound category. When you are going through the early stages of a separation, it is a uniquely, personal experience i.e. our good intention to separate in a ‘caring manner’ is affected by our emotional state i.e. pain, anger, loss, despair, anticipation, promise, hope, and optimism to find happiness.

The ending of my marriage of close to 25 years was not triggered by a specific event, but by the drip, drip indifference over several years in which we failed to take care of each other. As an aside, I have never blamed my children’s mother for any failing that contributed toward our separation. This has  allowed me to maintain some perspective on our twenty-five years together.

One of the tragedies for many intimate partners with children is that the post-separation chaos and tragic missteps, intentional or otherwise, leave one or both partners damaged and a profound emptiness at the end.

In other words, the post separation trauma overwhelms the good that was also part of the intimate relationship. This outcome may have unfortunate consequences for our children in the long-term.]

The decision to separate

When the decision to separate was made, there were only two, significant others, besides our children, that we worried /needed to tell; namely our best friends and my parents. We jointly told our best friends in our idealized version of what I call no fault or mutual fault separation. I separately went anxiously to tell my parents in Toronto. They had accompanied us on a car trip to Lake Placid a year earlier and I am sure (silently) observed a marriage in trouble.

For my parents, beloved grandparents to five, the news that I brought them turned out to be a pre-mature death sentence and a final 5 years of life filled with turmoil and little joy. A later life built around the families of their two sons, daughters-in-law and 5 grandchildren was to be shattered… with inadequate time for recovery.

Our family separation, as adult children, can become a separation for grandparents and other significant, family members and friends. In my case, they all became part of my burden as I struggled to understand the chaos that ensued for everyone that I loved and cared for.

My belief in myself and my children’s mother as good people and parents would be tested on an almost daily basis through the pain, I saw in those that I loved.

I believe there is a common, male attribute that requires us to ‘fix it’. I suspect that my upbringing in a home. where my dad (who I loved dearly) was a problem drinker added to a learned, childhood ‘responsibility’ to bring calm to our family life.

Reflections from down the road

I have now attained the age of my dad (75 years old) at the time of my separation, and this is my first serious attempt to describe this part of my life passage, 27 years later. I am still a father of three and now a grandfather to six – 2 girls, 4 boys ranging from one to twenty-one. 

I began to consider writing this essay after celebrating our Christmas 2017 brunch in our very, complicated family. It included all the family mentioned above and of course their partners. I know too well that none of this was certain, once that fateful decision was made to separate, and I made that journey to Toronto to my parents’ home.

 It is a rare day that I don’t think about my parents and our troubled, last years together.

“I often feel guilty about my good life- my joy for what I have now causes me to momentarily forget my parents’ premature loss to my children and our family.” 

The good news for this son is that their grandchildren remember them with great fondness for the many, family brunches and special weekends they dedicated to each grandchild. All of the grandchildren were in adolescence and thus had their only grandparents in their life for 12 or more years.

 It has been my mission to model their love and caring to their grandchildren in the best way possible; in order to ensure that their legacy endures from generation to generation to generation.

 Grandparents are often the forgotten story – the throwaway relationship – unintended, deliberate, or through indifference. 

It happens because it is allowed to happen. It is virtually never about being in the ‘best interests’ of the grandchild. It happens because the system continues to endorse a process that even the Law Commission of Ontario admit too often turns solvable problems into unsolvable outcomes … for a lifetime.

The Rest of the Story of My Family 

As noted earlier, I have little interest in assigning ‘blame’ for the human reactions of separating partners; but I am interested in understanding what did take place to help others in similar situations. It is also not my intention to excuse bad behavior that can threaten every family relationship. Each parent needs to be accountable; but there is a reality that accompanies virtually every family breakdown i.e. no one can predict with any certainty how each intimate partner with children is going to react going forward.

Rule: The most ‘predictable outcome’ is that there is no certainty! 

The separating process must therefore be built on a foundation that recognizes the above rule. It must be the role of professionals to be a guardrail to the decisions that move families into prolonged chaos and away from the calm that their families require.  

If you made it this far in reading, you may have decided what could possibly be my family’s problem. In summary, my separation appeared to be based upon a mutual breakdown i.e. no abuse by either party and a general recognition that each party was a caring parent. There was only one set of grandparents and the parents/grandparents were adored. My parents were seemingly in an enviable position to continue to be involved grandparents.

What happened? This should have been straightforward, eh? Remember the first rule: there is no certainty once the lever is pulled to separate.

The age of the children (every stage of adolescence) even seemed enviable, in that they could influence where/who they would live within certain limits. Our marital unhappiness over the last 2-3 years prior to separating had likely created/aggravated divisions in every parent/child relationship, and even child-child relationships.

I, for no real reason (guilt or caretaking perhaps?) agreed to leave the matrimonial home. Within 48 hours my oldest daughter chose to live with me. Thus in only a weekend, we had separated and an unintended outcome re: the children’s homes had occurred.

Most intimate couples with children are ill prepared emotionally and practically for what takes place. I know that to be true for myself and for my children’s mother. A separation – even when it is the right step – challenges you profoundly as a loving parent, as a caring man or woman through the loss of intimacy and as a provider.

Depression rates are 4-6 times higher for separating mothers and dads vs. intact family parents. Consider the impact of this reality for many families at the time of separating and how it influences the way the separation plays out.

Each parent prior to our separation recognized the other parent as a loving, caring mother and father; then the chaos that resulted was not the desired outcome for either party. The chaos derived from human and systemic failings.

The enemy for children, parents, and grandparents is prolonged chaos and the failure of support services-legal, quasi-legal and social services to recognize and control the dark impulses of one or both parents.

The separating process handles chaos within the family very badly. It often fails to recognize it for what it is and prefers to carry on with an adversarial process. 

Making it worse, the judicial process and social services seem to prefer a ‘case in, case closed’ approach to determine/assume their record of success. There is an absurd lack of professional curiosity about whether they ‘got it right’.

Prolonged chaos is the enemy to separating families and as such to grandparents and grandchildren.

The chaos factors

The following is a partial list of contributing factors that lead to chaos. Some are individual behaviors and some systemic failings. Individual behaviors may be initially unexpected but can easily be anticipated for they are in human relationships common enough.

A few common behaviors by a separating parent that lead to prolonged chaos:

1. A belief that they only are the parent that matters to the children.
2. A fear that they are going to lose (self-doubt) their relationship with their child, therefore they must minimize the other parent’s role. 
3. Alienation or Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS); behaviors that enlist children to reject the other parent and the child’s other, extended family. 
4. Depression for one or both parents (see earlier note). 
5. Behaviors such as stalking, misuse of social media, false allegations of abusive behavior etc. 
6. Total rejection of any notion of shared parenting.
7. Ineffective parenting that causes/creates child anxiety- thus it is stated that the child is not up to sleepovers- younger children sleeping with the parent on a nightly basis.
8. Enlisting therapists who simply run the clock that lead to prolonged absence of a parent and thus grandparents-many have no real goal of two parent involvement.
9. Using financial means to prolong a temporary order or delay any new order to maintain a current parenting advantage.
10. Other actions that create conditions for prolonged and destructive chaos.

The Judicial and Social System Contributions to Prolonged Chaos:

A) The judicial process is so flawed that there really is simply too much to explore.   I have written often about my disastrous experience as a novice to Family Law. A judicial process shouldn’t be measured by how it handles the relatively routine cases; it should be measured by how it manages the more difficult cases and whether the outcomes are family friendly in the long-term. 

B) Lawyers are too busy or fail to do what they say they will do. 

C) Poor communication skills. Lawyers fail to discuss your desires in the context of what is right for your children and you in the long run. 

D) Strategy too often runs the clock, no matter the human costs. 

E) See you as their client only. Fail to treat the family holistically.

 F) Employ a strategy that asserts unsubstantiated or false allegations of abuse; or attempts to create doubts about the character of the other parent to gain advantage.

 G) Financial costs of the drawn-out judicial process. This leads to simply waring out a party- surrendering for some parents becomes the only option to survive.  

H) No real effective monitoring of the judicial system in a meaningful way. No effective monitoring of F&CS that often are involved in prolonged, chaos cases. In addition, there is a lack of voluntary transparency by F&CS that makes challenging their decisions and protocols very difficult.

 I) Social services appear to have abdicated  any commitment honoring a two-parent philosophy. As such they often fail to provide ongoing, holistic services. Irritants and change are an inevitable aspect of separated parents’ journey. The two-parent philosophy must be endorsed from the get-go to best ensure it endures through the continuing challenges.

 J) Mediation services are too often under the auspices of the legal profession. They are cumbersome and expensive for they attempt to protect the lawyers’ role.  

 K) Lack of research on outcomes by legal and social services is a constant failing. 

 L) Other- Fill in your experiences!

In my family, most of the above factors played out for almost 900 days. It is impossible to exaggerate the impact of prolonged chaos!

My mother for some reason(s) decided it was her responsibility to ‘fix things’- to save the marriage or even to save us after my ‘news’. She was taken back to her own childhood and life events that she had appeared to conquer and now had been reawakened as dark memories at 75 years of age. My father simply retreated as best he could from the chaos that now engulfed every caring relationship that mattered to him. My mother’s twenty-five-year relationship with my children’s mother left her vulnerable to the never-ending twists and turns on a daily basis.

 My parents own relationship was now at risk. 

My occasional search for parental support and advice often turned into verbal conflict with my mother- leaving me angry, even in despair at the outcome; every visit left me feeling guilty/responsible for my parents’ obvious trauma. I had to accept that emotional support from them was no longer available.

There was no calm in our family, it was unrelenting!

 It was now Thanksgiving, almost 3 years and 900 days later, and I had asked my parents to come to my new place and meet Elaine for the ‘first time’. We were to be married in 2 months. My mother refused. My father decided it was time to meet Elaine and support his son openly. My parents undoubtedly had angry words.

I met my father at Milton’s Mc Donald’s – a half way pickup. He and I sat talking for almost 2 hours about what was/is taking place. He then came to our new home, met Elaine, and had a wonderful get together. I drove my dad back to Milton and his car later in the evening. 

Early the next morning, I received a call that my dad had a major stroke and was in a coma.  My parents’ last words of any significance to each other were undoubtedly angry, either before and/ or after my father’s visit. 

I do know that he ‘essentially’ died after doing what he had always done for me as a father and grandfather- to support and love me and my family.

The gift of a day together

“I am unsure that I could have ever reconciled his loss without the reassurance of our last day together.”

My dad’s coma continued for several days. I made the daily trip to Sunnybrook Hospital. My mother believed that my close relationship with my father could somehow awaken him from his coma, even though we were told by staff that he had suffered irreparable damage. After a number of days in this state, during my stay, he gradually awakened. However, the damage was in fact extensive and it is uncertain that he ever recognized his family as family, instead of just caregivers. Any true communication had ended!

For the next year and a half, I continued an almost daily drive to Toronto to further ‘awaken’ my father. My wedding had gone ahead, and my mother found a reason to not join us. She remained locked into her own post-separation world. I tried to reconcile with her by doing my role and provide companionship to my dad and support to my mother- who was driven to ‘repair’ my dad.

 The impact of their tragic last day together, prior to the stroke had a profound impact. She had no opportunity to reconcile with my dad. She eventually wore herself out and after a year+ died from a stroke within 72 hours.

My occasional conversations with my mother during the post stroke period made clear that she had a view of her son as someone different from who I am. She believed the falsehoods at worse; and at best considered them as possibilities. It is part of the evil of the separating process that falsehoods are often left hanging out- it is the Trumpian world. 

My mother who I had never argued with since the age of 10 until my separation at the age of 46 no longer knew her son. That was/is a difficult outcome to accept. Down the road a few years later, I told my older brother (who was very close to my mother) that he had to keep reminding me about all the good things about her, that I understood before the separation. They were lost to me in the chaos…and even now are difficult to retrieve. 

When my mother passed away, my brother decided that she would prefer the most basic of caskets and not a service. The cardboard box was purchased, and my mother was delivered to the crematorium by a driver in an Eddie Bauer t-shirt. The awaiting party of two sons and 2 daughters-in law alternated between tears and laughter at this too surreal moment. 

My brother suggested that he desired/needed to write an extensive obituary on my mother’s life and accomplishments for the Globe and Mail. I agreed and it was done at considerable cost. 

My dad’s inherent, physical strength had outlived my mother, his partner for almost 60 years. Now we were left only with her ashes. My brother opted out of participating any further. My mother’s ashes became my companion in my car for some time. Finally, I decided that I would dispose of them along the Humber River on the grounds of their condo- where they resided during their happiest years together. 

It was a dreary, misty, early morning as I walked the grounds alone spreading her ashes and at the same trying to conceal my task from the condo owners. Tears freely flowed as I was overwhelmed by grief, loss and the memory of the sad events of the last 4 years. 

It was soon time to return to my dad at Sunnybrook Hospital and take him for a walk in his wheelchair. Communicating the morning’s event drew no awareness from him. 

My father held on physically for another year. His passing occurred thankfully. The box and cremation were repeated, blessedly without the young man in the Eddie Bauer t-shirt. I carried my father’s ashes in my trunk for some time. I would talk to him about his grandchildren and other family happenings.

The odd thing is that I still talk to him and try to be the best of him as a parent and grandparent. It is the legacy that would most matter to him and to his father- my gramps. 

The separation and the prolonged chaos left everyone wounded and worn out. The grandchildren were never given the opportunity to grieve and celebrate their grandparents in a way that they should have been celebrated. A shame and an outcome connected directly to our separation.

Kids n Dad Shared Support was born out of loss and hope. Loss is inevitable following a separation; but it can be minimized by supporting the mission of family renewal, in whatever family form.

 The threads of hope still exist, and they can be woven into new beginnings for every family. 

Grandparents are near the top of the essential relationships that can mitigate chaos and create calm for children and children’s children!

For more on Barry’s own journey with separation, see the About Us section. For more on navigating separation and the holidays, see all posts from the blog tagged with Holidays.