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Alex Dooley
COMM 367 Anatomy of a Conflict Paper
Dr. Giuliano
5 March 2014
How to Lose A Mom in 10 Months (And How to Get Your Child Back)
My personal life is relatively free of conflict. Outside of a few random people with whom I
have little to no contact making the decision to dislike me from afar for no apparent reason, my
nuclear family and friend group have spared me from the seriously dramatic interpersonal
conflict experienced by many others. No life is perfectly free of conflict, however, and this truth
plays itself out in the truly toxic relationship between my paternal grandmother and aunt for
whom I sometimes find myself acting as de facto mediator.
I do not understand the full scope or magnitude of the history of conflict between my
grandmother and aunt, but exploring my family history does shed some light on potential agents
of tension between the two of them. My father is the youngest of three, and, being her and her
late husband's only son, still holds a special place in my grandmothers heart to this day. As a
child, he was always the smart one of his two older sisters and himself, earning consistently
high marks throughout school and excelling on the golf course as one of the top high school
golfers in the state of Florida certainly a son to be proud of.
My two aunts have told me humorous stories painting my father as spoiled or favored. In
retrospect, these stories probably came with a grain of hurt along with the humor, being an
indicator of legitimate, justified feelings of grief and jealousy toward my grandmother because of
her expressions of favoritism toward my father and comparative lack of motherly love for her
daughters. While completely valid and understandable, the way that my fathers oldest sister
seems to be dealing with these feelings has taken a marked turn for the worse in recent years.

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In December of 2010, it became time for my grandmother to move closer to her family.
Approaching 80 years old and living in relative solitude more than two hours from her closest
family member, her oldest daughter, it seemed wise for her to enter what were supposed to be
the golden years of her life in closer proximity to somebody who could love her, accompany her,
and generally act as the go-to person she lacked at her previous home. My family took the trip
down to central Florida, packed up everything in her central Floridian house and moved her to a
condo less than one mile from my aunt and her husband. My aunt assisted my grandmother in
setting up new bank accounts, applying for new credit cards, and otherwise managing her
finances as cosigner and joint owner on all her accounts.
After a honeymoon period of sorts lasting for a few brief weeks, it became apparent
that all was not well in the relationship between grandma and my aunt. Both parties involved
regularly reported frustration with the other, often portraying the other with grossly exaggerated,
superlative language. Shes a drunk! Shes senile! Shes irresponsible! Shes a meddler!
Neither of them were actively preparing for their hot buttons to be pushed, nor to appropriately
deal with their interpersonal conflict by taking time to collect their anger before resorting to
personal attacks. The level of conflict eventually rose to the point where my neither of them
wanted much more to do with the other than was necessary to ensure the continued paying of
bills and renewal of medical prescriptions.
Combined with the history of perceived marginalization in their relationship, the
interpersonal discord existing between my aunt and grandmother spurred my aunt to lash out in
a way much more serious than anyone in the family would have ever expected. Over the course
of approximately ten months, my aunt systematically withdrew over twenty thousand dollars
from my grandmothers checking account, completely unbeknownst to my grandmother.
When the reality of how bad the situation had become surfaced, my family intervened. It was not
good for either my grandmother or my aunt to be dealing closely with one another on a

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personal, day-to-day basis while the details of who owed whom how much were sorted out and
a realistic method of repayment established. So, just over one year to the day after moving her
into the apartment in Royal Palm Beach, my family drove back down to Florida, packed up her
things once again, and made the trip with her back to our home in Southern Maryland.
While certainly not all negative, having my grandmother live at our house has not been a
particularly easy experience for my family. To a large extent, it has particularly helped my own
parents and younger siblings understand the role my grandmother may have played in much of
the underlying bad blood between her and my aunt. Of course, stealing money from somebody
is clearly never an okay thing to do; it seems particularly reprehensible when committed with
such an egregious nature against ones own mother. That being said, only the two-year time
period of living with my grandmother has provided my family the ultimate exercise in taking the
role of the other and understanding the conflict from the less obvious point of view. Given the
gravity of her offense, it would be all too easy to place the vast majority of blame in this situation
on my aunt. However, as with many conflicts, this one goes back much further than January of
2011; the roots of bitterness that gave rise to both the malicious, misguided coping mechanisms
utilized by my aunt and the ongoing pessimism, depression, and cutting words of my
grandmother extend far below the surface on both sides.
Due to the fact that I have not permanently lived at home during the time my
grandmother has been living with us, I may be the only person in my family who has yet to burn
out on her nearly bipolar cycles from contentment to restlessness to outright bitterness to
renewed hope ad infinitum. When I return to Maryland for breaks, I feel that I am able to make a
genuine connection with my grandmother by meeting her on her level and being both able and
willing to hear out her frustrations. It is because of the unique relationship we have that I feel I
may actually be the best potential mediator in the situation between her and her daughter; I do

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not carry baggage resulting from previous disagreements, fights, or years of emotional neglect
and dissatisfaction.
That being said, the goal of reconciling my grandmother and aunt necessarily entails
overcoming what seems insurmountable: the literal dozens of years consisting of closed,
dishonest, hurtful communication between the two of them. Beyond this fact, one of the phrases
most commonly uttered to me by my grandmother goes something like this: Alex, Ive forgiven
her, but I can never forget about it what kind of daughter does something as terrible as that to
her mother? She took away all my retirement money! Nobody should be able to work that hard
their whole life and then just have everything shes worked for snatched right out from under
their nose by their own daughter. I dont even think of her as my daughter anymore; shes out of
my will and I dont necessarily feel any special kind of love for her because of what she did to
me. Claiming to have forgiven my aunt for stealing what was a significant sum of money yet
continuing to hold the offense over my aunts head and discuss it openly with other family
members is clearly problematic; it runs counter to the definition of true forgiveness and blocks
the potential for healing in the relationship.
How can a 21 year-old man help his 81 year-old grandmother see the need to be
captured by the hope of reconciliation in this relationship? It goes beyond my ability to make
anyone look beyond themselves and their own hurt to anticipate the possibility of renewed trust
and love in any situation, much less one as universally hurtful for both parties as this one. The
existence of wrongdoing and unresolved pain predating the primary offense in this relationship
adds even more to the complexity of this situation.
If reconciliation of any kind is going to come to my grandmother and aunt, the first step
absolutely must be an attitude of listening, understanding, and hope. The nuances of the
deeply-seated hurt that exists in this relationship will not be worked out in half an hour of
conversation, though. Adopting some form of the story lunch process may prove to be helpful for

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my grandmother and aunt; if the two of them would actually give each other time to express
themselves to the other in a completely open, safe, and non-confrontational environment while
being met with a genuinely open and responsive attitude, it may be the first time in their
relationship something of that sort has happened at all. Listening and understanding need to
occur in order for awareness of wrongdoing and apology to follow. A generally mutual
understanding and consensus of past wrongs needs to be reached before the present wrong
itself can even begin to be addressed effectively.
To the best of my knowledge, my aunt has at least verbally acknowledged the fact that
she was wrong in stealing from my grandmother and made an attempt at both apology and
partial repayment. When this entire ordeal came to the surface, my aunt lost a great deal of face
with my family, especially with my grandmother. Because of her current status in both my
grandmothers and her own eyes as the humiliated aggressor and irresponsible daughter, there
is not much that my aunt can effectively do in order to kickstart the process of reconciliation
between her and my grandmother. If there is to be a renewal of their relationship, I believe that
the initiation of any kind of reconciliatory process between the two of them needs to come on
the part of my grandmother. As things currently stand, any such attempt would certainly come
as a surprise to both my aunt and to anyone familiar with the situation; such a surprise is
necessary to affect change in their relationship.
Reconciliation will not be easy in this situation. There are so many hurdles for my
grandmother and aunt to get over. It seems that the only way for progress to be made in this
situation is for both of them to be completely captured by the hope for reconciliation. Only then
will they both be able to stop thinking of themselves as the victim of wrongdoing on part of the
other, move beyond the bitterness in their hearts, and even have a chance to rebuild a loving,
healthy relationship that may not have even existed from the start. In any conflict, there was a
time in the relationship when things were not conflicted even if that time may have been as

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far back as early childhood. There is always hope for change, but unless that hope is captured
by my grandmother and aunt, their relationship on earth is likely to end as a broken one, not
able to be mended until they meet in eternity.