It was always asked kindly, and it always assumed that reconciliation is the natural happy ending, the thing all estrangements should be working toward.

And I came to understand, slowly, that I did not owe anyone that ending, and more than that, that it was not available on any terms I could accept.

Because real reconciliation is not the same as reunion.

Reunion just requires everyone to agree to stop talking about it.

Reconciliation requires accountability — requires the person who harmed you to actually reckon with what they did, to understand it, to be sorry for the thing itself and not merely for its consequences to them.

And that reckoning was the one thing my family was constitutionally unable to produce.

They were sorry the ledger came out.

They were sorry the money stopped.

They were sorry about the will, the blood pressure, the sold house, the exposure.

They were never, at any point, sorry for the thing itself, because to be sorry for the thing itself they would first have to believe it was wrong, and they did not.