Post Estrangement: Letters for my Grandson

Song 70 for Walter: "Where Is The Love?"

Dear Walter,

There is so much judgement and negativity in the world.
There are wars and terrorism and there is discrimination.

There are disputes and the need to be right. 

But where is the love?

• Even in families the content of the argument is more important than the love.  
• The hanging onto old grudges is more important than the love. 
• Being right is more important than love.
• Judging others is more important than love.
• Punishing is more important than love.
• Controlling others is more important than love.
• Telling others what they ought to say or think or do is more important than love.
• Feeling good is more important than love.
• Feeling superior is more important than love.
• Getting what you want is more important than love. 

Love has become twisted and contorted by the ego.  

If you love me you will do what I want you to do for ME.  
I ask you Walter, “is that love”?  Is this what you are learning about the nature of love?

Is that what people have started to equate with love? 

• Is the quality of my love gauged by my willingness to sacrifice myself to please them?
• Is my worthiness to receive love based on what I sacrifice to earn it? 

I am completely baffled by today’s standard of what love is. 
In my old fashioned view, love should not be used to control and manipulate other people’s behaviour.  Love should be a gift freely given and not have strings attached.

Maybe your Mamma-rae has it all wrong, but in the world I want to live in, love is not used as a tool of acquisition.  Love is a gift to be shared from a level playing field.  Love should not be withheld as punishment or used to coerce certain behaviour. 

And it brings me to the place where I have to ask what is wrong with people who feel they have the right to use love as a tool to get what they want?  What character flaw is in them that they feel they can use love to hold others hostage?

If this is what love means in today’s world then I truly feel sorry for those who, like you who are growing up with this definition of love.

“whatever happened to the values of humanity

Whatever happened to the fairness and equality”

What happened to loving people for WHO they are not for
WHAT they can do for you?

Has love now become a commodity and when you can’t pay the price of receiving love you are denied it?

It seems that now we toss people away when they can no longer provide the services desired to earn love.

"It just ain't the same, old ways have changed

New days are strange, is the world insane?"

How will you experience love?

What message of love are you receiving?
What message of love are you learning?

I wonder and fear for all the young ones and the message they are receiving. 

Will you wonder “where is the love?”

Or will your generation 
wonder as I do, 

"What has become of love?"



Your Mamma-rae 


Renate Dundys Marrello 

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