Tell Giselle: Apologize without excuses or caveats

This follows up on the column “Apologizing has no expiration date” (May 27) and continues the theme of what to make of hearing from someone from your distant past. Considering that the holiday dinner table may have helped launch new hostilities, or added new layers to an existing feud or conflict, some readers may need to extend an apology.

Doing that “properly,” and by that I mean effectively, requires sincere effort to fully flesh out a narrative, rather than offer up a cursory skim of the tale that brought the need for saying one is sorry.

The backstory … In 2007 I was living in Washington, D.C. and had returned to Colorado for a few weeks. I was shopping with my adult daughter at one of my usual stores for groceries. We were surprised to run into a man I had very, very briefly dated. By that time, I had not seen or heard from him in close to ten years. He was there shopping with two young children that he introduced to us as his daughters.

As he and I crammed in a brief update with one another, the smell of alcohol was noted by me and my daughter. Shortly after that encounter I sent him a lengthy email to express my concern about the alcohol we detected on his breath. (I definitely should have told him this at the store and dealt with how to get his children home safely.)

This was not the first time I had raised his drinking as a serious problem. In just a few weeks I had also discovered that he did not pay taxes. He had admitted to me that both he and his father believed being forced to pay taxes was unconstitutional.

I knew there was no way I was going to persuade him to end his drinking and delusional and illegal tax avoidance dance. Tax cheating and an unhealthy use of alcohol are threshold issues that caused me to run from continuing a relationship, even a friendship, with him despite the fact that I recognized he had many positive qualities.

You can imagine my shock when I got an email from him this past spring, in which he was explaining to me the situation that occurred about thirty years ago. He mentioned back in 2007 he had written to me a 4-page word doc on his computer, but at some point his house had been burglarized, the computer was stolen, and he did not have it backed up. He only recently had discovered he had an AOL folder with my name, thus he was able to reach out to me and respond to my very old email.

OK that was a fairly good beginning but it quickly went south.

He went on to explain that in 2007 his godmother had offered him something to drink while they were in bible camp at the local church. “It was dominated by a lot of vodka,” his story went, adding, “so that’s why (I’m thinking) that I had a strong smell of alcohol on my breath that day when I had the good fortune of seeing your face and your smile.”

Uh huh. A bible camp/local church where vodka is served.

I don’t know about you, but anytime I have been offered a drink with vodka, I knew there was vodka in it, and could feel its effects rather quickly.

So much for his ’splainin.’ And as to an actual apology, nowhere in sight.

His tax avoidance never came up. Nor did the time when he arrived over an hour late and drunk to my home, for a dinner party where he was to meet for the first time some dear friends of mine … the proverbial twig that broke the camel’s back.

I responded to his email this past spring but I did not bother to go into those unforgettable details. I know now, as I did then, that his heart still has a spot with my name on it as he expressed his affection quite directly. My response conveyed I was in a great place in my life and only wished the best for him.

Here’s the truth: I know we are all doing the best we can. In my playbook, apologies are successful when they go wide and deep, and reveal self-reflection and growth. I realize, for those who are in the throes of alcohol abuse disorder, as I believe he was and more than likely may still be, that it is probably expecting far too much for a “satisfactory” apology.

Still, affection or strolls down the nostalgia lane are insufficient to restore many a shattered connection.

My door, however, remains unlocked to those from my past. If I do hear from anyone estranged from me, whether it be friend, foe, family or tight squeeze, the only guarantee is I can readily extend forgiveness, goodwill, and gratitude to them. The experiences we shared are part of what has formed my wisdom, if not my stash of awesome memories.

As to reconstituting a friendship, however, that likely will depend on how the apology goes down. In the case of the above-mentioned nice guy, he would also have to show me decades of tax returns.