home to care for her
aging parents until their deaths. She had built up a lifetime of unspoken resentments
about her role, in spite of the secondary gains of being a martyr similar to the
heroine of Final Payrnents by Mary Gordon (1981). The aunt never missed sending
cards for birthdays or Christmas, but when the niece attempted to make more personal
contact, she resisted it strongly, agreeing to meet only rarely and for short visits,
limiting discussion strictly to the topics she chose. Initially the niece was quite
put off by this behavior, describing her aunt as "a prune with doilies on the
chairs". She was annoyed that her "open hearted" approaches were rebuffed
for no apparent reason. However, the young woman persisted. It took several years
of letters and gradually more personal phone calls before shewas able to learn enough
about the family background to realize that the resentment she was experiencing had
been carried down in the family for several generations. This aunt was the unappreciated
and over-burdened spinster, who stayed home and resentfully cared for her parents,
while her brothers got the glory. She had become the repository of unforgotten slights,
"offering up" her family burdens in her prayers for the family's return
to the Church. Church rules had been used in the service of bolstering her self-righteous
indignation, which covered her sense of betrayal and hurt that her efforts on behalf
of the family had never been reciprocated or appreciated.

In families such as this the work obviously proceeds slowly. However, the long-term
benefit of each pursuit to family members is often powerful in overcoming their painful
sense of isolation and