拓展阅读教学材料：
Chain of Love
My father and I have been separated for over two years. He was physically violent and emotionally abusive to me throughout my childhood, and I felt that I couldn't forgive him. And yet, now he is dying, unconscious and struggling to breathe through an oxygen tube after a major stroke, all I can think of is how much he loved me.
How he would hold my fringe back and kiss me on the forehead before school. How he bought me a pottery set and roller skates, although we were struggling by on just his salary, and allowed me to skate to school. How he would play chess and tennis with me, and take me to endless chess and tennis tournaments even though I never won anything. How he would read the Guardian every day and fill in the quick crossword, but leave a few clues and praise me if I solved them. He kept every one of my Guardian columns and every article I ever had published, even during our many estranged periods. He gave me a lot of his savings to buy a flat after I became a single mum. And he set my date of birth as the passcode on his phone.
Yet I'm ashamed to say I blamed him, often, for everything: my cutting, my anxiety, my depression.... He was there during the tough times, yet all I could think was that the tough times happened because of him, forgetting that the causes of events are complex, and that plenty of people who had happy childhoods have to deal with mental illness and domestic violence, too.
I even stopped him from seeing my daughter, then three, the thing that brought him most happiness, because I was scared he would hurt her, and that her life would be like mine. That decision would mean he never spoke to me again.
When we spent time together in previous years, my father hugged me a lot and yet never talked much. Born in 1930s America during the Depression, he was a man of few words, a silent romantic who signed his empty Valentine's cards to my mother with only his first initial. I know he thought I talked too much; ironically, I never told him what I needed to. Knowing he was old, I tried to get back in touch several times to make things right, but my mother said he didn't want to hear from me. I understand that. Why would he want to hear from the daughter who was never able to forgive him for his mistakes; who prevented him from seeing his granddaughter; who scolded him for his faults, yet never acknowledged his numerous kindnesses?
It's much too late now. When I sit by his hospital bed and hold his large wrinkled hand, far too warm, and ask him to squeeze it if he can hear me, he doesn't. So I tell him a few of the things I should have told him when he was conscious, though it's hard to say the words: that I love him very much, and that I'm sorry about the estrangement. And it reminds me of what I've known for a long time: that my dad didn't know how to be a father to me when I was young, because his father was abusive to him as a child. His father died estranged from his son and my father is dying estranged from his daughter.
I never thought that I'd feel this broken at losing him. I fantasize that his eyes will open and that he will be conscious again for just a few days. I will give him a letter thanking him for all the things I have remembered while writing this piece and apologizing for all the ways I have wronged him. And when I deliver the letter, I will bring my five-year-old daughter with me, so he can see her happiness and sweetness and learn that the chain of hurt that has been passed down from generation to generation has finally been broken.