Daily Excerpt: Healing from Incest (Henderson & Emerton) - Funeral
Excerpt from Healing from Incest by Geri Henderson and Seanne Emerton:
Funeral
Looking
at him lying there, at peace for the first time in his life no doubt, I knew
that anything we'd shared, good or bad, was over. There was a feeling of
complete separation and release that surprised me. I expected to feel
something, seeing my father’s body—at least, to sense a familiar dread and
fear—but those feelings simply were not there. The lack of feeling, positive or
negative, was another new experience. There was nothing more to fear, and I had
no regret that our journey together had ended as it had. It was not the end
that I had read about or was told is healthy for such relationships. There was
no great apology, no dramatic separation, and no therapeutic confrontation. Just
an end to what had been a terrible and long journey of struggle and hope.
(I
have now realized, that there were many things that came to an end that day,
but there are others that may never be as “complete” or finished as I had
always hoped. I’ve always wanted a Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval: Congratulations!
You’re done! No. I guess not. My current therapist, Gretchen, after Seanne and
Marilka, says she will never hand me that award.)
As this memoir is now
written in retrospect, Geri is even clearer in her knowing that the healing
journey is a lifetime effort. In fact, a significant factor in her healing is
her ability to reflect and to continue to openly and honestly process her life
experiences.
I
had not really planned to come to the funeral. I had been abroad several years;
the distance was long and the cost expensive. I thought I didn't care. I found
out that was true; I didn't care, not really, not about saying goodbye to my
father. But I was very glad I had come when I found out how much it meant to my
siblings.
I did all the things the eldest should do—be involved in the planning, organize
the music, help choose flowers and casket, and agree to say something during
the funeral. I told the only story I could think of where I'd been impressed
with my father’s kindness. It was on a snowy, bitter New Year's Eve when I left
my parents' house to return to college in a car I'd just purchased. The clutch
went out about two-and-a-half hours into my ten-hour trip. I called home. Despite
having obligations as the minister of a conservative church, my father came,
completely encased in a flannel-lined coverall. He'd roused a wrecking yard
owner to find the spare part we needed, and he lay in the snow for several
hours, fixing the car. It was hard for me to believe at the time, but it was an
act of kindness and care that made a huge impression on me. When I finished
telling my story at the funeral, I said something about having had a difficult
relationship with Father and added my gratitude for the things he'd given me—a love
of learning, a love of music, and an innate ability to teach.
He was not all “bad.” He
passed on many good qualities. It is important to identify the good and not
completely reject the man. After all, Geri’s father is part of her identity. We
make a critical error when the father perpetrator is completely villainized. Doing
so would have reinforced Geri’s belief that she is indeed “bad” herself since
she is her father’s offspring.
Geri, perhaps because being
first born but also perhaps because she is a person trained “to do the right
thing,” diligently maintained communication with her parents throughout her
adult life. She would often entertain them for dinner in her home and suffer
severe migraines for days afterward. Her father frequently wanted to sit by her
at the dinner table. It took a great deal of coaching to have her assert her
boundaries and sit away from him. She wouldn’t hear of not inviting them to her
home. The fact is that he was still her dad and family was still family. Early on,
her brother and sister had no clue about what their father had done, and so
Geri hosted family meals for the “greater good” and at the expense of herself
and her own needs. In fact, her own needs were pushed so far down that she had
no idea what they even were, let alone the voice to express them.
The art of therapy is to
notice and hold the incongruences while pressing the client to expand her
conscious thought, to embrace the confusing spectrum of emotions. When I met
Geri, she did not give herself permission to own her anger at her father—partly
because of his good qualities and partly, I think, because her anger scared
her. She had been trained to be the dutiful, first-born daughter. However, she
could not effectively process the mixed bag of emotions from her abuse until
she felt safe to own the anger she had toward him. To feel safe, Geri had to
fully understand that expressing her anger did not mean rejecting her father
completely. On some level, she loved him. Indeed, he had given her the gifts
she articulated at his funeral: her love of learning, love of music, and the
innate ability to teach. However, claiming anger toward her father and fully
facing the reality that indeed he was a sexual perpetrator, has always been
difficult for Geri.
I
don’t think I would have been able to trust Seanne had she initially described
me as a “dutiful daughter.” It flew in the face of everything I knew. I had
never thought of myself in that way but rather the “bad girl” my father had
always told me I was. It would have been a surprise and not very helpful to
have heard this from Seanne in the beginning, and I remember how long it took
me to change my mind about this.
Timing is everything in
therapy. I have to meet the client where she is and with high empathy. This is
critical to help the client feel safe. I constantly tuck away any hypotheses
and must carefully edit my thoughts before articulating them. The consequences
of a poorly-timed statement from me could have been quite costly. I
desperately wanted to reframe Geri as the dutiful daughter as early as the
first session so she could begin feeling some compassion for herself. Yet, as
she says, that would have flown in the face of her reality and would have
discredited me. Doing therapy is like a chess game. I had to think through the
impact of our next move and how Geri would most likely respond or take it in. The
process is often frustratingly slow and requires great patience, which is
challenging for me.
At
my father’s funeral it was the minister who made the biggest impression on
everyone, even the family. He said, "I had a sermon prepared, but you have
heard from his children and grandchildren more than I had planned to say. “
“However,”
he added, “what you should know is that toward the end of Charles' life, he
became very concerned about the spiritual lives of those he saw—all the nurses,
doctors, anyone who visited him. He clung to the cross of Jesus and wanted
everyone to know of its importance. You see, Charles had done things that could
have ripped his family apart. He was a deeply flawed man and knew the saving
importance of redemption."
Behind
me, I felt Seanne and all my closest friends take a breath. The minister then
went on to let people know they could experience the same thing my father had: peace
in redemption.
It was powerfully healing
for Geri to have the minister publically recognize her father’s flaws. The
service itself embraced the dichotomies that defined Charles. This is an
element of a well-designed service. The power of good ceremony cannot be
overestimated. This service did more than extended therapy sessions could have
for Geri’s continued healing. This is because she could hear it claimed in a
public place, and by a person she respected deeply, that truly her father was flawed. He wasn’t a saint, and it was okay to say so. She didn’t have
to pretend anymore.
This funeral was five years
after Geri terminated therapy with me. She had moved abroad and was seeing a
therapist there at the time. Clearly her work in therapy was not complete. It
helped me to know she had a therapist continuing to work with her on the incongruences
of both loving and hating her father. At the time of her father’s death, we had
just begun working on this book and had renegotiated our relationship as
colleagues. I chose to attend the funeral as her friend.
After the funeral, I spent another week with my family and found that we had all reacted to this event very differently. The relationships that my two younger siblings and I had with our father were very distinct from each other. This made our individual ways of saying goodbye to him very personal and also affected the way we each felt about his death and memorial service. I shouldn’t have been surprised.
Finalist, Book of the Year Award
Book Excellence Award
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