Dear Ann,
Grandchildren don’t get to choose who their grandparents are. When we are born they just show up and we have to accept them.
My Dad’s parents died when I was six. I really don’t remember very much about them at all. I remember the Gerencser farm, the outhouse, the wood cook stove, and the funny language Grandma and Grandpa spoke.
My Mom’s side of the family “blessed” me with two sets of grandparents, Grandma Rausch and Grandma and Grandpa Tieken.
I don’t know how old I was before I realized that Grandma Rausch used to be Grandma Tieken.
For most of my life, Grandma Rausch was the only grandparent I had. She wasn’t perfect but she loved me. I was after all, grandson number one. She taught me to love baseball and to be passionate about life. She had her faults but I never doubted for one moment that she loved me.
Here is what I remember about you and Grandpa Tieken.
I remember every Christmas being a day of anxiety and turmoil. I remember the fights and you and Grandma Rausch not being able to be in the same room together. This was resolved by having two Christmases, two of every holiday
I remember Grandpa’s nasty and violent temper.
I remember Grandpa slugging my teen age uncle, knocking him off his chair on to the kitchen floor. I saw Grandpa hit him more than a few times.
I remember Grandpa beating the shit out of my brother and I because we took apart an old phone that was in the garage.
Wonderful childhood memories.
Do I have any good memories of you and Grandpa Tieken during my younger years?
I have two.
I remember Grandpa taking us up in an airplane he had just overhauled and I vividly remember Grandpa taking me to a Detroit Tigers, Cleveland Indians game at Briggs Stadium in 1968. I got to see Mickey Lolich pitch. He bought me a Tiger’s pennant.
That’s it.
You were always a Church going Christian. What were you thinking when you married the drinking, carousing John Tieken? But you won, and Grandpa Tieken found Jesus.
For the next 30 plus years you and Grandpa were devoted followers of Jesus. I remember going to Sunnyvale Chapel every time we came to visit you. I remember singing the Countdown song in Junior Church.
As I got older I began to understand things from my Mom’s perspective. Her relationship with you and her Dad was always strained. Lots of turmoil, lots of stress. Lots of angry words and cussing.
She showed me the letters you and her traded. So much anger, so little Jesus.
Mom told me about her younger years. She told me about what went on and what happened to her. Awful things. Shameful things. She told me about confronting Grandpa about these things and he told her that God had forgiven him and they were under the blood. Not one word of sorrow or admission of guilt. A new life in Christ wiped the slate clean.
I have often wondered if my Mom’s mental illness found its root in the events that took place in Missouri when she was but a youth. I know she felt she could never measure up and you and Grandpa had a real knack for reminding family of their shortcomings. After all we were Bob Gerencser’s kids.
When I went to college I lived a few miles away from you. For the first time I learned how controlling and demanding you and Grandpa could be. Now I know I wasn’t the perfect grandson. I remember charging to your home phone long distance phone calls to Polly. That aside, you did your best to manipulate and control my life.
When I started pastoring churches you and Grandpa started sending us money through the church. We really appreciated it and it really was a big help. And then it stopped. Why? The church treasurer didn’t send you your giving statement when you expected it and just like that you stopped sending the money. Did our need change?
When I was pastoring in Somerset, Ohio you and Grandpa came to visit a few times. Polly and I will never forget these visits, how could we?
I remember you and Grandpa sitting in the last pew in the back, on the left side. The building was packed. This was during the time when the church was growing rapidly. After I had preached and gave an invitation, I asked if anyone had something to share. Grandpa did. He stood and told the entire congregation what was wrong with my sermon. I wanted to die. He thoroughly embarrassed and shamed me.
I remember when you came to visit us in Junction City. Again, who can forget the visit? This was your last visit to my home, twenty-three years ago.
Grandpa spent a good bit of time lecturing me about my car being dirty. Evidently, having a dirty car was a bad testimony. Too bad he didn’t take that same approach with Mom.
After dinner, oh I remember it like yesterday, we were sitting in the living room and one of our young children got too close to Grandpa. What did he do? He kicked them. I knew then and there that regardless of his love for Jesus he didn’t love our family and he would always be a mean son-of-a-bitch.
I think we saw you and Grandpa once or twice after that. I remember driving to Pontiac to see Grandpa after his cancer surgery. He was out of it. If I remember right you took us to lunch at the Buffet.
For his seventy-fifth birthday you had a party for Grandpa. You called a few days before the party and told me that if I was any kind of grandson at all that my family and I would be at the party. Never mind Polly would have to take off work. Never mind the party was on a night that we had church. All that mattered is that we showed up to give Grandpa’s birthday party an air of respectability.
I remember what came next like it was yesterday. The true Ann rose to the surface and you preceded to tell me what a terrible grandson I was and how terrible my family was. You were vicious and vindictive.
Finally, after forty years, I had had enough. I told you that you should have worried about the importance of family twenty years ago. I then told you that I was no longer interested in having any contact with you or Grandpa. Like my mother, I decided to get off the Tieken drama train.
And that is where things remained for a long time.
In 2003, I moved to Clare Michigan to pastor a Southern Baptist church. In what can only be a cruel twist of fate, our family moved to the same gated community that you and your new husband lived in. What are the odds? You lived less than 2 miles from my home.
You came to visit the church I pastored and invited us over to dinner. I didn’t want to come but I thought, what kind of Christian am I? Surely, I can forgive and let the past be the past.
And so we went. Things went fairly well until you decided to let me know, as if it was a fact that everyone knew, that my father was not really my father. I showed no reaction to this revelation but it stunned me and cut me right to the quick. I knew my Mom was pregnant when she married Dad but I had never heard what you were telling me.
Why did you tell me this? What good could ever come of it? Believe me, I still have not gotten past this. I have come to see that what you told me is probably the truth but to what end was the telling of this truth?
Church members were excited to find out that I was the grandson to Gramma Clarke, a fine, kind, loving, Christian woman if there ever was one, they told me. All I ever told them is that things are not always as they seem.
Of course I understood how this dualistic view of you was possible. You and Grandpa were always good at the smile real big, I love Jesus game, all the while stabbing your family in the back. It is a game that a lot of Christians play.
Nine years have passed since I last saw you in Clare, Michigan. Life moves on. I have a wonderful wife, six kids, and eight grandchildren. And I am an atheist.
You must have done a Facebook search for me because you “found” me. You sent me an email that said:
What ? An athiest ?? Sorry Sorry Sorry !!!What happened ? How’s Polly & your family??
Nine years and this is what you send me?
Ann, you need to understand something. I am not interested in reviving any kind of relationship with you. One of the things I have learned in counseling is that I get to choose who I want to associate with, who I want to be friends with.
My counselor and I spend a lot of time talking about family and the past. He told me, Bruce it is OK to not be friends with people you don’t want to be friends with. No more loving everyone because Jesus loves everyone. I am free to love who I want.
I don’t wish you any ill-will. That said, I don’t want to have a relationship, especially a pretend Facebook friendship. Ooh Look! Bruce got reconnected with his estranged Grandmother. Isn’t God good!!
Not gonna happen. I have exactly zero interest in pursuing a relationship with you. It is too late.
My “good” memories of you and and Grandpa are few and far between. (and I haven’t even mentioned things that I am still, to this day, embarrassed to mention) You really don’t know me and I don’t know you. And that is OK.
Life is messy, Ann and this is one mess in aisle three that no one can clean up. I have been told that I have a hard time forgiving and forgetting. This is perhaps a true assessment of me. I told Polly tonight that I am quite willing to forgive but it is hard to do when there is never an admission of guilt or the words I am sorry are never uttered. How can there be since the blood of Jesus wipes away every shitty thing that a person has ever done. Talk about a get out of responsibility for sin card.
I am sure you will think I am just like my mother. I am.
You know what my last memory of my Mom is? After I tearfully and with a broken heart concluded my 54 year old Mom’s graveside service, Grandpa Tieken took the “opportunity” to preach at us and tell us that Mom was in heaven. Just days before she had put a gun to her chest and pulled the trigger. We all were reeling with grief and pain and Grandpa, in a classic Grandma and Grandpa Tieken moment, decided to preach instead of love.
Bruce
I’m sorry to hear of your painful memories, my friend and Polly. I certainly can identify with huge chunks of it.
I have not forgiven my mother. I don’t understand her to this day. I am with you. I sincere apology would go a long way but she never did apologize sincerely. She is dead now and l did not go to see her when she was dying nor did any of her children want a funeral to go to. Six kids and three of them still spoke to her, three of us did not. I had not spoken to her but twice in 35 or 40 years.
Some people are incredibly selfish and incredibly bad for us. We shouldn’t feel required to talk with them or love them despite the whole honor your parents Bible crapola. People should have at least a few traits worthy of honor. I loved my mother for quite a few years of my life but I didn’t by the time she passed away.
Your grandparents are who they are and sadly, like so many people, they have the get out of jail free card that allows them to do any hurt and just walk away with a Jesus forgave me and so should you attitude.
I am sorry about your mom. Such a hard situation. To have your grandparents use that as a platform for a sermon is sick.
I believe that for many people who are abused in Christian homes and a Christian society, that the abuse is multiplied by the honor your parents and forgive like Jesus forgives and the many sermons about submission and god testing you and the attitudes about sex. How can a girl be pure and virginal when she has been molested? The shame of sitting in a pew listening to be a virgin when you get married just pounds the shame of not being a “good girl” into people’s hearts. They despair of God’s so-called love and they should. What kind of a loving God allows for this kind of crap especially in a Christian home?
None of the abuse I received turned me away from God but the whole damn mess I went through as a kid sure makes a lot more sense without God. You are brave to share how you feel and your life story, Bruce. I hope someone in the audience sees that they are not being tested by God, they are not required to put up with abuse and they are not less as human beings because of all they have gone through. Make it a good life, peeps, as best you can, We all deserve a nice life and it is up to us to work for it.
One thing about growing up this way…it keeps professional counselors busy.
It has taken me a long time to outgrow the Jesus loves everyone so I have to too thinking. Some people are bad for me and they lend nothing to my life. They have gone on with their life as have I…why try to have a fake friendship?
My family has/had a lot of dysfunction on both sides of the family. It is no wonder we turned to religion. However, all that religion did was put a thin coat of paint over the dysfunction. I live a few miles from relatives I haven’t seen, outside of a funeral, in decades. I used to have a lot of guilt over this. I have come to see that everyone has chosen their own path and having a relationship is not part of that. I am fine with this. Life is too short…
I am so sorry, man. Much of this mirrors my own life, which is
why I am the half-assed nothing and piece of shit that I am.
These kinds of things scar you for life. Thank “god” I am an
Atheist now, as I am quick to see and label people for what they are. No more, “it’s under the blood” bullshit.
The pain from things like this never go away. As I’ve learned, all
the counseling in the world doesn’t make it better and never will.
And, in light of this and countless other lives wrecked and ruined
by this madness, I gladly blaspheme their stupid Jehovah. Fuck him and the horse he rode in on. And all of his “children” as well.
Well Done. Well Done Indeed. Life has enough headaches to re-capture old ones for us to re-clothe ourselves in past ones.
Thanks, DagoodS.
Did you send this to her, or is this only for your blog?
And your counselor is right, of course. We need to give ourselves permission to form our own families. Made by heart rather than by circumstance.
I’ve often said that hearing “I’m sorry” would have gone a long way toward healing some things in my life. Always found it strange that simple good manners (apologizing, trying to make things up to someone you’ve wronged, even inadvertently) are, well, optional once you’ve had a bucket of jesusblood dumped on ya.
Blog writing is a form of therapy for me. I wont send it to her but I have no doubt she will have it sent to her by a family member or she will stop by and read my blog.
Most of my early hurt was not caused by religion, but like you, hearing a “Sorry” would help so much in the healing process. I think real hard about the possible pain I’ve caused my kids (and don’t we all cause each other pain), and if it ever comes up in conversation I make sure to wear the responsibility for getting it wrong. I hope they don’t suffer as much lifelong grief because of their childhood experiences with me as their learner driver parent, I really do.
I find it sad that Christianity does not actually change the person. I sincerely wish it did, but from being around Christians all my life– and actually having been one for most of that time — my observation is that belief does not change the person all that much. Under certain doctrines it can make them far worse– as in the case Bruce illuminates.
For me I found that the correct SSRI medications have made my behaviors much better. I don’t have the outbursts and anxiety attacks that often made me hell to be around. But that had nothing to do with believing in Jesus. I still have a lot of forgiveness to earn from those I have hurt. I continue to work on that. It’s not enough (for me personally) just to ask for forgiveness, there has to be a true change in behavior as well.
I now find it really odd to think that a blood cleans anything. Just try tossing in a cup of blood into the laundry sometime if you want an illustration of how foolish this doctrine is. These barbaric bronze age atonement rituals need to go away and people need to take responsibility for their actions without expecting someone else’s imaginary work to cover for them.
I can be a long-memory, unforgiving person but I am most often this way with people who think their religious beliefs give them a free pass on everything they did BJ. (before Jesus) What they seem to miss is that one of crucial components of the Christian gospel is restitution, making things right. Evangelicals, in particular, have this idea that they can do anything they want and then run to Jesus for forgiveness. Everything is viewed as an affront to their God rather than an affront to the person they offended or harmed. The actual person harmed in incidental to whole sin/forgiveness dynamic.
Wow! BruceI Did we come from the same family? I have had to deal with this kind of thing all my life. Which is why I got the hell out of dodge at 17 years old. I have family on my husbands side we never see either and they live in the same town with us. But they are toxic and we made our choice not to have a relationship. It sucks that my kids have no grandparents around though.
Oh Bruce. I am getting caught up on your posts from the past few days. You’ve been busy. I am so sorry for the pain that this blog post represents. Thank you for what you are doing here on your blog to help me fill in the blanks and work through the confusion I am dealing with. Just thank you. Those words are terribly inadequate, but they will have to do:) All the best to you and please never stop posting!
Bruce ~ my heart goes out to you, Polly and your children. Eventhough our stories are different, I relate to your story as I see daily how such a screwed up family affects my husband. I wish I could make it ‘better’. I don’t know how many times I endured their abuse towards me and my daughters so that my husband would have a ‘family’. The most liberating phrase spoken to me was our counselor, she told me that she gave me permission to not speak to and / or associate with them. Where nature fails to give a decent family, friends can and do fill the void. I grew up in a ‘normal’ family, and I was not prepared when I married into a family that puts the “fun” in dysfunction. Do I wish that we didn’t have to burn that bridge with his family? Yes. Do I wish that my daughters had a loving grandma? You bet. However, I am so glad we shut the door on these people as we deserve to not be bullied and abused by them. Life is to short.
Dammit Bruce. I thought I had a rough life. I can, however, relate to the concept of Christian masks, the one I used to wear when others were looking. The ones my parents wore when friends came over. I can’t imagine, though, how I would have coped in your situation. But your journey inspires and your character is unshaken. I know that life continues and I need to see the beauty in my life in the moment. Thanks for reminding me of that.
Thanks, Eldon.