You Missed Out On Being Grandparents

I apologize to the readers here because this isn't the type of thing that's usually posted. I learned that this site requires no registration or red tape to post quickly, and that's why I'm using it. This is a short letter to my long estranged parents. One they'll never read, but one I needed to write, especially today.

I want to remind you both that you, by your own choice, missed watching your beautiful granddaughter grow up. She turns 21 today, and she's getting ready to go to graduate school in the fall. She likes chemistry and art and horses and helping elderly people and a lot of other things young people like.

You could have delighted in being her grandparents and she could have added a lot to your lives. That didn't happen because I had the audacity, as a white man, to fall in love with a black woman. You disowned me as soon as you realized we were getting married. You ignored all my attempts to reconcile with you over the years, and you even had your hired man escort me off your property.

What's sadder, and weirder, is that you implied it wouldn't have been so bad if I had gone for a "lighter skinned black." I guess if my fiancee had skin and features like Halle Berry, I might have "got away with it" but because her skin is like Lupita Nyong'o's, my family and I are shunned forever.

When she was old enough to understand, my wife and I told our daughter why she's never met her paternal grandparents. We didn't want to cause her any pain, but we figured making excuses would have been worse. She had pretty much figured out what the situation was already. She wasn't angry but she was hurt, and she cried. In one sense she couldn't understand, but in another sense she understood perfectly well.

I was sorry for her, but sorrier for you. You've cheated yourself out of a wonderful experience because of old beliefs and concepts that have given you a lot less than they've taken from you. You'll go to your graves without realising what you lost.