The Grandfather Effect: Conclusion
Recap: Last month, Brian Dahlen met with his uncle and cousins whom he hadn’t been in contact with in over a decade. Much to his surprise, they didn’t even know about the disownment. He left their conversation with three new issues to resolve: (1) Was his grandfather truly a narcissist who didn’t care to ask about his family? (2) Could his grandfather’s Alzheimer’s have played a role in the disownment? (3) Was it too late to heal the broken relationship between his dad and uncle?
There’s only one more person that could give me any sort of concrete, first-hand information about my grandpa, and he is the oldest living relative in my family—my dad’s only living cousin, Marshall Junior. My great-grandfather Oscar Henry Dahlen had two sons: Marshall and Thomas. Marshall is my great-uncle, and Thomas is my grandfather, the one who disowned us over a birthday card. Grandpa Tom had two sons—Tom Jr. and Bill, my dad. Great-Uncle Marshall had two sons as well—Robert and Marshall Jr. Sadly, Robert passed away a number of years ago. But Marshall Jr. is still living. So, that makes him the only other person who would have any intimate knowledge of my grandfather.
Marshall Jr. agreed to meet with my brother and me while I was in Minnesota. Even though none of us had ever met, it didn’t take long to get comfortable. He’s a very young and sharp 80.
Brian: “How much do you know about Oscar?”
Marshall Jr.: “He was 50 years old when he passed away. He was very young … And Helen [his wife] lived much longer. She lived in Seattle and in ‘78, Helen moved back here … died at the age of 93. We had her over to the house; lovely lady. A stoic German woman.
Brian: “So not much emotion?”
Marshall Jr.: “She may have had it, but she didn’t show a lot of emotion.”
Could that be a clue into my grandfather’s personality? Was he a product of his stoic, non-emotive mother? Maybe. But at the same time, Marshall shared something about my great-grandfather and my family legacy that makes me immensely proud.
Marshall Jr.: “His label business became what I have been told to be the seventh largest label company in the world. I went to work there when I was younger, and I had been taught by people who had worked for my grandfather. The thing we did there was [we] treated them like family. My grandfather, during the depression, kept them working … It was a family business run for all the employees as a family.”
Brian: “So was he taking a loss of sorts during that season, just to keep people working, to care for them?”
Marshall Jr.: “Yeah, that’s what he did. He did all of that to keep people working.”
Brian: “That shows a compassionate heart there.”
My great-grandfather treated his employees like family. And in an act of overwhelming generosity and love, took a financial loss during the depression and started another business just to be sure his employees were cared for.
[My grandfather’s dad] was a man of generosity and character. And based upon what I just learned, those qualities were passed along to his son Marshall Sr., and his grandson Marshall Jr. Doesn’t that make you wonder: Why didn’t my grandfather get those qualities?
I decided it was time to start finding out what Marshall Jr. remembers about my Grandpa Tom.
Marshall Jr: “I would describe my dad as flamboyant and your grandfather as being more quiet and methodical … I always shot from the hip, and he shot from the calculator.”
Quiet. Methodical. Introverted. Focused on detail. Never shot from the hip.
However, my dad’s cousin added a brand-new layer to the disownment mystery.
Marshall Jr.: “The two families didn’t meet a lot together. When your grandmother Betty died, it became a different kind of situation for some reason or other. I think Betty’s passing was the end of the family get-togethers. Betty was just the nicest lady I can remember … Your grandfather changed a lot when Betty passed away … he just became very quiet.”
I had to ask about the disownment. I did my best to explain what transpired and as I wrapped up, I gently asked for his take.
Marshall Jr.: “Apparently, Tom was [beginning with] Alzheimer’s disease … and I think that may have been part of what Tom was going through.”
But how could this be? Is it even medically possible for someone to show signs of dementia in the late 1970s, and then live all the way until 1992?
My friend Dr. David Fisher is a family physician and geriatrician in Durham, North Carolina. He works regularly with Alzheimer’s patients in his practice, so I figured he’d have some answers.
Brian to Dr. David Fisher: “What, medically, is Alzheimer’s?”
Dr. Fisher: “Alzheimer’s disease is one type of dementia, a cognitive impairment that impairs one’s ability to function daily. It starts with memory and cognitive processing … people become more forgetful and have more difficulty with daily tasks like driving and cooking … but then it also starts to impact other functions, even the ability to walk, eat, and use the bathroom.”
Brian: “Does it affect personality in any way?”
Dr. Fisher: “The trend that I tend to see is one of two things: One reaction is to act out and be belligerent. Another reaction is to just withdraw from the world. By definition, they become less and less self-aware … the short-term memory is really affected.”
Brian: “Is it possible [Grandpa Tom] could of, because of Alzheimer’s, missed two birthdays?”
Dr. Fisher: “I would say that is very possible … [it’s] very possible that played a leading role in what happened … someone who once was good at a particular activity or particular routine now suddenly ‘misfiring’ … that is the earliest sign of Alzheimer’s disease … it can be small subtle things like missing a birthday.”
Brian: “Is it even possible though, if he passed away in ‘92 of the disease, that possibly 10 years earlier, you would see signs of this?”
Dr. Fisher: “Sure … there’s a wide variation in terms of the progression.”
Brian: “Is it possible that he even forgot that my dad sent him a letter?”
Dr. Fisher: “Yeah, I can’t rule out the possibility … that he couldn’t process everything that was being said in the letter. Sometimes the response to not being able to fully process something is to lash out or withdraw. Maybe this was just such a difficult thing for him to comprehend, he just didn’t know what to do.”
In order to sort all this out, it was time for outside expertise. My dear friend and mentor, Nancy Kane, is a professor, author, and licensed clinical counselor. She graciously agreed [to a] pro-bono counseling session, of sorts.
Brian: “So what’s your overall reaction?”
Nancy: “I kept wondering why everyone didn’t address the elephant in the room. Why was there a cutoff and why was there this obvious unknown incident? I got the impression that your dad hadn’t been in a whole lot of contact with his brother and that somehow was ok. As well, the reverse, your uncle having this resentment towards his brother and him saying ‘My bad,’ but clearly it wasn’t bad enough for him to do something about it.”
Brian: “Can you psychoanalyze my grandpa yet?”
Nancy: “Well, I think he was probably emotionally shut down. Apart from the Alzheimer’s, the way they were describing him—very detailed and organized, whereas his brother was more flamboyant … it’s not uncommon in family systems to play a certain role. It sounds like he picked up on the role of being responsible, detailed, [and] organized but within all of that not having a whole lot of [affection] … How do you get close to someone who doesn’t have a whole lot of emotional wherewithal? You can’t. It’s like bonding with a computer.”
Brian: “How does one become that way?”
Nancy: “It was probably related to his attachment—or lack of attachment—to his mother. Because we learn our emotional well-being and sense of vibrancy, emotionally, from that first bonding with our parents, specifically our mother. But if there is some breakdown in attachment, then the child will go to a shutdown place … Withdrawal in a relationship is just as violent as open hostility.”
Brian: “I wanted this to be some sort of easy answer. I laughed thinking ‘Hey, it would be great if he was just a jerk,’ because then I could dismiss it … but it seems much more complicated than that, and I’ve walked away with maybe more questions than answers. So how do I process through this as a follower of Christ who is looking to find forgiveness and peace and love?”
Nancy: “The question still begs, ‘What will you need to be able to let the pain go and to really forgive?’ … God will never override our choices to not love, to not care, to numb ourselves and turn away from Him in our own selfishness. So, with your grandpa, it really is a complex situation … Was he a jerk? No, but he also chose not to love in a way that was radical or meaningful. That’s very significant. It’s just dressed up in a way that doesn’t look so violent.”
It feels to me like I set out to find answers about why my grandfather disowned me. I find myself with more questions and now with more convictions. My eyes feel opened to the realities of mental illness and generational patterns. In talking to Dr. Fisher about Alzheimer’s, my heart is broken in how that could have played a role in my grandfather’s life. Since talking with Nancy Kane, I realize that other issues are at play here—issues I am the victim of and the perpetrator of in a long lineage of familial mess. So, what does all this mean about my grandfather? About me? Maybe this journey wasn’t the Spirit pushing me toward clarity but toward conviction. Maybe the story wasn’t about my grandfather at all, maybe it was about me. About all of us.
How does this particular story end?
I gathered the rough drafts of all the episodes, and let my parents digest it.
Brian’s mom: “We were both listening to it separately, and we both finished it about the same time, and we both cried. We felt just awful. We didn’t know they [Brian’s Uncle Tom] needed help. I felt awful that we didn’t know that their dad [Grandpa Tom] had been having memory problems for many years. I’ve listened to it three times now. And the second time I listened to it; I was angry. I was angry because I heard something the second time that I didn’t hear the first time … when Tom said that he kept the girls away from you kids and our family because of his unhappiness, his anger at your dad. I was also angry because I hope that if we had known, that if he [Grandpa Tom] was having so many memory issues, that we wouldn’t have made such a big deal out of the birthday stuff that started everything. And the third time I listened to it; it just made me sad because it made me think of all the years that were wasted because we didn’t know.”
Brian: “I was shocked that your dad never once asked about you—or us—in those 10 years. When you found that out, Dad, what was your reaction to that?”
Brian’s Dad: “In a way I wasn’t surprised … but obviously it seems way out of the norm to not ask about your grandchildren … you look back and see there were a lot of mistakes that I made … in retrospect, I should have called shortly after that [incident] when we got no reaction and more often than that subsequently. There is no good answer…”
In fairy tales, people live happily ever after. But real life isn’t exclusively like any of that—as my family story clearly indicates. The Christian life doesn’t allow us to escape the realities of sin. The generational consequences of brokenness. The uncertainty of human relationships. Much of life is unresolved. Sure, there are periods of intense joy and sorrow, but none of us can escape unanswered questions and unresolved pain. That’s why I’m grateful for Jesus. Following Him enables me to have hope and peace in the midst of life’s struggles. His life, death, and resurrection over two thousand years ago invite us to endure a tumultuous life with the promise of an ending far beyond what we could imagine or deserve.