Perhaps by even mentioning it to you, she was subtly seeking advice.

Make peace if you can, and even if this involves you in a certain amount of emotional pain; make peace as well if you have to fake it and actually feel nothing (but try, try to be convincing); make peace because the parent-child connection means something, and is etched into the very matrix of our genome; make peace because it is an act of kindness, and because kindness trumps pride and it trumps past hurts, particularly because they are so long past. Make peace because an old man needs it so very badly, and because it will help him far more than it hurts you; make peace even because, if you make yourself receptive, it may connect you with taproots of pain you've spent a lifetime trying to deny, and in establishing those pathways might end in helping you more than it hurts.


Well done. Is very to the point for her situation, and in a larger sense a life truth. Life is hard, no one said it would be easy. Our pain and trials only serve to grow us, on so many levels.

If she chooses this road, once she makes it through to the other side she'll be kicking herself in the ass wondering why she wasted so much time.