Cristina Odone: Divorce never gets any easier

My brother and I are looking forward to Easter with the same enthusiasm as when we were youngsters: in our case, not a lot. Our parents were divorced, you see, and that meant every holiday became a minor battleground: were we spending the day at mother’s or father’s? Whatever the choice, Francesco and I risked hurting someone. The same is true today, more than 30 years on: our parents are elderly, fragile and still living apart. Every holiday, they hint, could be the last: so… whom do we choose? There are two of us, thank goodness. My brother, probably, will spend Easter with our dad in Italy; while I shall have my mother, who lives in London, over at our place. This gives my mother an unfair advantage, my father is bound to complain, as she gets to see Isabella, their only grandchild. Meanwhile, my mother will speak resentfully of the way Francesco will miss yet another family occasion. The tug of war is familiar to all children of divorce – but grows more intense and exhausting with age and infirmity. Everyone knows about the short-term trauma of parents splitting, but the long-term consequences are mostly ignored. “Couples who come to see me focus on the here and now,” agrees counsellor Fergus Greer. “In most cases one of them is thinking that they have already found the new person with whom they will spend their sunset years. I have to explain that they’re kidding themselves: 60 per cent of second marriages end in divorce; and 75 per cent of third marriages do. It’s very likely that both will spend their last years on their own.”