What I am about to describe happens often in families and can become a way of dealing with problems that becomes generational. In my family when a serious issue arose  that seemed to have no resolution  it was not unusual that  all communication ceased . So aunts and uncles on one side would not speak to aunts and uncles on the other side. Silence was the weapon of choice . So years would pass and people would die without having spoken to each other again  . How desperately sad.

I have gone out of my way to teach my children that its important to argue  through  issues and then agree to disagree if needs be. Human nature as it is I can only hope that we can learn from all the pain and regret that  the older generation  wrought upon themselves and those close to them.

This TA hits a couple of nerves with me.  I was raised in a family not too disimilar to the one that your described Cate.  The whole response to something that challenged or made my mother feel uncomfortable meant that she adopted a position of silence.  Cold unresponsive silence - not just adopted muteness. 

It continued through into my siblings to an awful and destructive degree.  Unitl a couple of weeks before she died my three other siblings hadn't sat down together for some 20 something years.  Being the youngest, I seem to have been able to have some relationship with each of them but we were a fractured family - learning the ways of silence rather than dealing with each other.  I organised a lunch of my siblings amidst great protest but ultimately all of the reasons for the "great silence"  had been forgotten and we enjoyed a long and pleasant day - except for my poor mum who was worried the whole time. Why?  I think she used it to control the relationships between us.  I used to confound and irritate her immensely by refusing to accept her version of events as absolute truth.  She felt me distrustful and disloyal.  When she said she wasn't happy about the idea of a lunch, I was perhaps more blunt than one should be with a dying woman "This isn't about you mum - this is about us.  I am not prepared to go to your funeral and have to reintroduce my brothers and sisters to each other."  Mum was silent.  She put on a good face during the lunch and then retired inside and didn't speak to me until the next day.  Both of us being very stubborn.  

I had grown up thinking that my father's mother was a monster - I met her once when I was three and then I can remember realising that my mother didn't come and I decided if this woman didn't like my mother then I would not either.  She died when I was 27 - having outlived my father who I missed terribly.  I think that was the only time that I was pulled into the behaviour - and I was only three or so.  

Things changed in some ways after that and I never quite held my mother in the same esteem. I just wanted my mother to be someone that she could not be for me.

I think may family members  all struggle with some aspects of the silent treatment we grew up with - either my father or I were often sent to conventry for some reason or another - I learnt from him to ignore her and not work to give her any additional attention for her behaviour.  I was never very good at playing along with the game and it didn't really help any - just made me feel that internal self sufficiency was better than being externally "odd". 

The keeping of secrets of events that have hurt us in our lives, is really the mark that we bear.  That is our struggle and I see that it is passed down to my older nephews and neices.  Like you Cate, I have tried to teach my kids other ways - trying to emphasise the difference between keeping secrets which are bound up in hurt and the need for privacy.  I think that I am somewhat successful and hope it translates into a better balance for them in their later lives. For now, even this short recount brings to me so much sadness, that I don't want them to have to experience.