Every year millions of children experience the trauma of their
parents' divorce. Millions more have already gone through that pain
and been affected in ways large and small. What can help children
of divorce? One who has been there shares the keys that helped him
through that experience.
My life was going to be forever changed, that much I could
understand. I knew Mom and Dad were not getting along very well,
because sometimes at night, through my bedroom wall, I could hear
the sounds of arguing, then crying. But as of tonight our family
would never be the same again.
A man waited in a car across the street, and when Dad got home the
man gave him some papers. In less time than it takes to watch a TV
sitcom, it was over. Dad packed a few things, got in his car and
left. Our family of four was no more.
Divorce was a word that sounded like a bomb exploding. This was the
early 1970s, and while more and more families around us were being
torn apart by divorce, it had always seemed like such a remote
thing. I'd heard about it, and I knew families who had gone through
it, but divorce was not something that I ever imagined would touch
me or my family.
But on that blackest of all nights, it did. I couldn't fathom what
the future would be like, but I knew without a doubt that the rest
of my life would be very different from my first 11 years.
Over the years I've likened the destruction of my family to
standing on a beach with a double-fisted handful of very fine, very
dry, very special sand. It has substance, but it isn't solidit
isn't anything you can really hang onto.
No matter how hard you try to squeeze and hold on to it, with every
beat of your heart more of it sifts through the small gaps between
your fingers and falls to the ground. You can't catch what is
falling without dropping more, and you could never ever gather
every grain of your special handful of sand and hold it all
together again. In no time, most of it is gone and all you have
left in your hands is an empty space.
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