A family falling apart--part two.

Ajay looked happy,confident & at ease when he visited me after two weeks.He said that he had successfully united the family once more & they were more positively inclined towards him.

He sorted out his financial affairs by selling the pricier house & also his car.He had started fulfilling some of the demands of his family members.But he was unhappy because he had no job.He was planning to open a store in a new colony.He had got his son admitted in a diploma course of computer engineering on the basis of his tenth class marks,which were good.

After all this rush of good news,he had a confession to make.Sometime back he had helped a widow with her child's illness.But he did not want to dwell on this topic.I wondered silently if this was why his family had ostracized him;because they were all grown up,old enough to understand infidelity;if it was that,(the youngest was the son who had failed thrice in twelfth class).However he did not want me to connect this with the fissure in his family.Obviously he blurted this out because it was weighing heavily on his mind.I also did not press any further because i did not want to breach his comfort level.

He was an intelligent man & quite capable of righting the emotional & financial turmoil in his home(however i was going to be proved wrong in his next visit).His daughter's suicide and the ensuing legal battles,his only son's errant ways,his own joblessness & perhaps his guilt pangs;had all combined to push him into deep depression which obstructed constructive thinking.Opening his heart out in the first session had done him a lot of good & he had regained confidence in his ability to solve the disputes raging in his home.

I suggested that he should analyse when & why all these problems started,what was the cause & how he could prevent it from recurring again.I asked him how he had brought about the changes in his family's atmosphere & we had a discussion about what all needed to be done to give a fillip to the family's cohesion.

Congratulating him for all the progress made,i again expressed a desire to meet his wife but he was reluctant to do so.I asked him to come again after two weeks.

To be continued....