Remember Me

I started Lent on a low note this year. One of the lowest notes ever. As I've alluded to in the past, my daughter moved home just before Christmas, granddaughter in tow. I cannot say that I was looking forward to this, even though I love them both. I knew my daughter had a tendency to let other people watch the baby (at two, I suppose I can't call her that anymore.) And I did not want to lose our comfortable and quiet life to this.

I really had no idea.

My daughter, you see, had become a video game addict. Her entire life was invested in World of Warcraft, in the friends she had made in this game, and in the group activities in the game she took part in. So when she moved in, she had no plans to better herself, to get a job or an education. Her world was and is Warcraft. Period.

But that was still not the half of it. Not at all. What made my blood boil and rage was the absolute and complete inattention to my granddaughter. My daughter had little interest in her when she was on that game, and to say that is to be charitable. She did not know what she got into, or what she would be doing at any given moment. So by osmosis, by default... whatever, my wife and I were slowly dragged into parenting roles. So much for the loose idea of the occasional weekend visit, spoiling her, sending her home. Our granddaughter at nearly two did not know how to speak, did not know how to play, did not know how to do anything other than to go at the computer, and mimic a computer user. My wife and I had to become engaged quite vividly in teaching her how to be a little girl.

And there was the loss of our daily routine to the chaos.

My younger daughter would come home from school and find her things destroyed. Eventually, everything in our living room of any value at all would move higher than five feet. And my daughter would be completely oblivious to the fact that the little girl had been into anything, let alone everything. My wife would come home and find a load of clothes already in the dryer, which she would end up being forced to fold. Dinner would not be made. Diapers would be full. And then I would come home and find the living room a shambles with bits of food strewn everywhere, a filthy baby running around the room wearing nothing but a diaper, and my daughter on the computer talking into a headset about gold or pixelated monsters. I could vacuum - but what was the point? It would look just as bad the next day. I would tell my wife that it was all I could do not to call Children's Aid on my own daughter!

My mother, who is estranged from my daughter, would recommend harsh tactics to deal with it, and I would feel caught in the middle. Yes, I was angry. But was I really ready to give up on my family? Most of all, my life had been completely coloured in darkness: whenever I was not angry, I was despondent. What did we do wrong?

I poured over my memories. Was this "Cats in the Cradle" syndrome? It couldn't be! My daughter's life was completely unlike my granddaughter's. We filled her life with activity: my wife would sit and teach her to do crafts, play board games and card games with her, and ferry her around to activities like Dance class and Brownies. Every day I took her to the park - for years, without fail, every day was a day of me running around chasing her on the play structures, pushing her on the swings, hide and seek, and jumping from the highest heights we could find to jump from. I would hoist her up over my head, talk to her about the meaning of life, and we would walk miles with her up on my shoulders. Every day we did this!

"Don't kids learn how to parent from their parents?" I asked my wife on the verge of tears one night in the car. "Didn't we more or less get it right?"

This is how Lent began for me. Dark. Angry. Despairing. Did I have the Holy Spirit? No.

This was my Dark Night of the Soul. The truth, the way, and the life had been crushed out of me.

The darkness did not begin to end for me until Palm Sunday. If not quite an epiphany, the awareness that God really does do things on his own time returned to me. Everything will be alright, that still yet powerful voice had once said to me. Would it not be true? It might just take a while. What I really needed to do was my part. Faith is not a spectator sport, and I've spent months asking for things from God without giving him anything in return. It was time for me to give him my repentance: repentance for my months of anger. That Sunday, I remembered there was to be a reconciliation service the next night, and I would go.

On Sunday evening, the music director asked me to sing a song I had written, that I had played for him months before. The song itself was a sort of confession, and that I was asked to do this I consider a gentle irony. God gave me my music as a tool to witness. Now he was giving me my music to witness against myself. So before I could go to confession, I would have to sing a confession.

How far I've fallen,
I'll never know
I've lived in the darkness
That reigns below
The power of your mercy
The strength of your grace
Lifts me up
To see your face

And so it is I've fallen down
To let all my sorrows drown

The rivers of tears I'll cry for your feet
I'll dry with my hair for the times I've been weak
Let me love much Lord, let me love deep
Abundant forgiveness for the tears that I weep

After the music was done, I scrambled for one of the last priests still taking penitent people for reconciliation.

"I've been angry all the time for months. I can't feel anything anymore, not one positive thing," I told him.

"Do you remember the homily?" He said, "where Father said you must ask for forgiveness from those you wrong? And how you must forgive to be forgiven? God is Love. And love's distinguishing quality is forgiveness. Remember this."

The weight began to lift. On the way home, my wife told me my daughter was upset with me. I had left the Internet blocked all day. When I got home. I cracked open the Magnificat, and the recommended penance was to ask someone for forgiveness. I get the message, Lord, I whispered.

I went downstairs, and for the first time since my granddaughter was born, I kissed my daughter on the head, and felt real compassion for her. Addiction is not easy for anyone to defeat. It wouldn't be for her.

"I'm sorry I left you stranded without the Internet today my little one," I said. And in a way, I meant it; I really am sorry. When she's older, when I am gone, when she is not addicted to video games anymore... she will know that I truly did not want to be an ogre. These are not the memories I want her to have of me. I want her to remember the Dad who hoisted her up over his head, talked to her about the meaning of life. I want her to know that there was a Father who carried her, just as there is a Heavenly Father who carries us all.


"These holy days reawaken a great hope in us. Christ was crucified, yet he rose again and conquered the world. Love is stronger than hate, it has triumphed and we should affiliate ourselves with this victory of love. We should therefore start again from Christ and work together with him for a world founded on peace, justice and love."

Benedict XVI