I don't historically have much contact with My Dad's Mother. There are ways her life was irreparably screwed up because of that appalling Irish straightjacket Catholicism, and I can see that, but I will never forgive her for this incident:
My Dad 'lost the faith' some years before he met my Mother, but when he took her home to meet his folks for the first time, just before they got married (or just after, I'm not sure), My Dad's Mother, in typically appalling fashion, blamed my Mother for taking 'Terry' (John's pet family name) away from the faith and therefore the family and her. She got down on her knees in front of my Mother and prayed that all their children would be mongoloids.
A wonderful, caring woman, or stupid, blinkered, riddled with the cancer of religious guilt old… yeah, yeah, I take that incident too seriously. And I know I'll regret it in the end, there's no need to tell me that when she eventually pops off, I'll probably feel bad. Truth is though, I don't really know her anyway so I'm not really interested.
Do I feel bad that I harbour such ludicrous emotions about people that are part of my family? Well, what do you think. There's no way of resolving it. How can I talk to an eighty-plus year old woman about that?
"Hey, Grannie, you remember when you prayed that we would all be mongoloids - well, I've got a Cystic Hygroma, Stephen's Epileptic and Owen nearly died because of a genetic disorder he picked up from the Hurley family. Want a biscuit?"