Sweet Surrender by Mary Moody

children. That’s a very good thing. But it doesn’t stop me from still feeling the pain of it all. I can’t even begin to imagine how terrible it must be for grandparents when there is a marriage split and they are denied access to their grandchildren because of custody battles or financial disputes.
    Aaron and Lorna’s split came as a rude shock to me, and this has been a common thread through all my dealings with my children andtheir partners. There is a tendency within the family to shelter me from anything that is negative or painful or unhappy. To protect me from the harsh realities of life. They know I love everyone to be happy. No conflict. No confrontation. The past few years when David and I almost separated – ‘the troubles’, as I now jokingly refer to them – were an aberration. Until this rocky period I had always sought to keep things running smoothly. From the moment I first set up house with David, this is how I wanted things to be.
    So when Miriam phoned us from Adelaide in early 2007 to say that she and Rick had separated, I could barely believe the words searing down the line. She was crying, of course, and was in profound shock herself. It had been sudden, turbulent and, she felt certain, quite final. At the time, Ethan and Lynne and their children were still living with us at the farm. Ethan was at work. I don’t know where David was – maybe at the gym. I reeled from my office to the kitchen where Lynne was setting up a feed for Isabella. I blurted out the bare facts and she, too, howled in disbelief. We sat at the table, sobbing and drinking tea and trying to put the fragments of information we had together. Dismay and disbelief were the overriding emotions.
    Initially Miriam wanted to ‘come home’. To pack up the house and the four boys and run back to an emotionally safe place. I readily agreed, feeling a need not only to see her but to help out in some way. That plan only lasted a few hours. By then the troops – Miriam’s solid core of strong and supportive female friends – had rallied. They buoyed her spirits and provided plenty of practical as well as emotional support.
    One of the first things I did was to send an SMS message to Rick, who was staying with a friend temporarily. Just to let him know that no matter what had happened between him and Miriam, we loved and supported him too. We did. We had always loved Rick, and I was well aware that he would be hurting just as much as our daughter. He decided to take some leave from work and visit his father in Sydney. It was only a few weeks after the initial bust-up, and he asked if he couldstay overnight with us at the farm on the way through. Of course he could; it would be good to see him and to talk.
    In the meantime, I spoke with Miriam virtually every day. Her mood changed constantly. She swung from feeling happy and relieved that she was free from what she saw as an untenable situation, to feeling frightened and lonely and desperately sad at how it had all ended.
    As usual I kept hoping that there might be a resolution. They could have marriage counselling perhaps. They could give it a second chance, as David and I had done. My continued denial of the truth of the situation and my blind optimism that that there could be a reconciliation were galling for Miriam. What she wanted and needed from me was unequivocal love and support for the very difficult decision she had made. She had my love, but she knew that at heart I wanted her to change her mind. To capitulate and compromise.
    In the end she became angry with my attitude, and I can’t really blame her. It was the first time in thirty-four years that she had been so critical of me, and I was shocked and hurt. As an outside observer of her marriage I had perceived various problems over the years, but had concluded that they were just the normal domestic ructions that all families experience. Miriam had always given me the