Once upon a time, there was a happy family. Mom, Dad and the kids, playing in the backyard, laughing and singing songs.

The kids grew up and then something happened to one of the sons that got into his mind, sending an icy chill into his heart that no spring or summer could ever thaw.

The chill was caused by The Grudge, an invisible monster that kept him away from his family forever.

The Grudge made this young man stop loving his parents; it convinced him that something his mother said or something his father did that hurt him could never be fixed.

All the wonderful days that made for happy memories were thrown in the trash. Tears from missing their son kept Mom and Dad awake at night. No texts. No mail. The phone rang, but it was never him calling. The door to his heart was locked and he threw away the key.

This Grudge is a spreading pandemic. A recent survey revealed that the monster has infected 38% of American adults who report an active estrangement from a relative; 67 million people have completely cut off contact with a family member; 27 million of those are adult children with no contact with a parent.

An argument between a sister and her brother ended their relationship 17 years ago. She doesn’t know if he’s still alive. He doesn’t care if she’s dead. A nephew won’t shake hands with his once-favorite uncle. A 63-year-old daughter has not spoken to her 84-year-old mother in 12 years. They live 5 miles away from each other, but their hearts are as far apart as the Earth is to the moon.

The Grudge delivers no bloodshed. It’s a grenade that explodes families into heartbroken pieces, leaving scars that never heal. The monster destroys a loving bond that would have been, could have been, and should have been forever.

Other victims are easy prey for The Grudge. Years of absence and abandonment from proms, graduations, weddings and the like strike the heart hard with a hammer, allowing no chance to build a relationship that never was and no desire for reconciliation.

Problems that give birth to The Grudge often don’t justify the murder of family relationships. There was an argument. Loud shouting, tears falling, doors slamming. Years go by. The cause of the argument matters no more; it gets washed away with a tsunami wave of stubborn defiance.

No one remembers exactly what happened. The Grudge keeps doing its business to keep two people who had loved each other or wanted to love each other — now dead to each other.

Confucius said, “To be wronged is nothing unless you continue to remember it.”

In Oregon, two estranged brothers didn’t speak to each other for 12 years after a bitter argument over the family business. They were reunited when their families arranged a surprise lunch for them at a diner on Christmas Eve.

A Pennsylvania father had two adult sons who had not spoken or seen each other in two years because of a quarrel, something about a fight their children had at a backyard picnic. He invited them to dinner, but neither one knew the other was coming. Once together, the sons stood nose to nose and blamed each other for what had happened 24 months ago.

“Sit down, both of you,” Dad said. “I don’t care if it takes all night to settle whatever grudge you still have, but I will not live the rest of my life without you loving each other like you did when you were kids.” A difficult hour later, the two brothers cried in each other’s arms. Today they are best friends again.

Actress Carrie Fisher said, “Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.” Her words describe how I felt about my father. I resented him.

When I was young, he took me fishing a few times and came to one of my Little League Baseball games. I made a great catch in the outfield. He shouted, “Atta boy, Rich!” from the bleachers. Then he lost his job. The stress gave him bleeding ulcers. He and Mom got into drunken battles, screaming insults at each other while I lay in bed at night wrapping a pillow around my head to muffle their voices.

He died when I was 19, and I didn’t care. He never taught me anything, never gave me advice and never said he loved me. The Grudge lived inside me until one day when I was in my 40 I found a shoebox in the attic of the house I grew up in that was being sold after Mom had died.

The box was filled with love letters he had written in 1936 to my mom before they were married. He promised her a good life and wanted to raise a family. The man in the shoebox was not the person I blamed for causing Mom’s heart attack when she was 46 years old. Reading his letters changed everything I felt about him.

I wrote Dad a letter and placed it on his grave. I felt relieved from the power of forgiveness. I told him I loved him. The man in the shoebox is my dad, the father he wanted to be, not the man that he came to be.

Now, whenever I do something good, I hear him shout from heaven, “Atta boy, Rich!”

Whether the topic of this column applies to you or someone you might know, please accept my insistence. Drop the pride. Kill The Grudge before all that’s left is saying goodbye while standing over a casket. I heard someone once say, “The flowers won’t hear your apology.”

Make the phone call. Write the letter. Use the incredible power of forgiveness to heal the hurt. What once was good can be good again.

If it was bad, then start the healing. Do it before it’s too late, before the tears fall onto a grave site, leaving no chance to ever make it right again.

Email Rich Strack at richiesadie11@gmail.com