I would say: do not decide in the first week what the relationship is going to be. Do not make permanent decisions in temporary emotional states. The first week is for getting through. The decisions come later, when you have more information.
I would say: you are not obligated to reconcile. You are not obligated to perform a family for an audience that wasn’t there when the damage was being done. If you reconcile, do it because it serves you, not because someone else needs to see you do it.
I would also say: if there is something worth saving, save it. Not immediately, and not on false terms, but if there is something real underneath the wreckage, it is worth the effort of finding out.
For me there was something real. A daughter who was afraid and wrong and who is, when she is not afraid, a person I genuinely like. A son-in-law who is kind and honest and who was lied to and chose to stay. A woman named Ruth who showed up at a planning meeting and changed the structure of my daily life.
I would not have found any of this if I had let the anger be the only thing.
## The Wedding I Missed
I did not attend my daughter’s wedding.
It was a civil ceremony. Small and courthouse-based, because Paige had told Andrew she did not want a large celebration, which was at least partially true. The absence of a large celebration was easier to explain than the absence of a mother, so the courthouse was serving two purposes at once.