First off, I don’t need any consoling. I think I’m fine. If anything, please critique me.
My dad and I were estranged for a decade, before that he barely interacted with me except to scold me for something. I was terrified that, as some people say, the loss of an estranged parent would bring feelings of regret for lack of closure. But really, it’s hard to feel much for someone who paid the bills and babysat with disinterest. I need some positive memories to actually miss somebody.
The one thing this has done has been to wake me up a bit. With climate catastrophe barrelling towards us, I’ve used my computer as an escape and I’ve neglected relationships. My phone always has unread messages. Fuck, I don’t want to be my dad, watching TV and mildly annoyed by the kids, rarely stopped to scream at the top of his lungs to tell the kids to “shut up”. Kids in my gf’s family want to play Roblox and Minecraft, ugh fine. At least have some good memories of me.
My dad’s not a bad person, he just profoundly indifferent to everything outside of TV and the middle class white people he tried to tie his identity too. My dad worked a trade, and I wish to fuck that he could be proud of being a prole. Decades of (likely) lead poisoning probably didn’t help. After retirement he got some real pro-landlord beliefs, although thankfully he never went full chud. Maybe if his son wasn’t bookish, fucking suck terribly at sport, didn’t leave the Church, go lefty, go vegan, get a small flat in the city, give up TV at 16, maybe he’d show a bit of interest. Probably if I bought a 4 bedroom house somewhere and had kids, shit, he’d start to ask me how my day was.
Talk to the people in your life, especially the young. FFS, don’t be my dad.
maybe he’d show a bit of interest.
Fuck that. When you have a kid, you are interested in them no matter who they are. Even if they are the most boring dumbfuck in the world, you are interested in your kid. There was nothing wrong with you, the issue was all him. It took me a long time to realize this for myself too, but now I know.
I’m sorry for your loss. For the father who died, and the father you never had.
I do feel partly bad for dad. He was born in a reactionary time in reactionary country with reactionary bullshit on the airwaves 24/7. I do waver between pity and annoyance.
However, I would also like to not graduate from school and buy a house in my twenties!
Edit: thanks for the kind words
Reading other peoples’ experiences with their parents makes me all the more grateful for mine.
Good for you giving up TV
I feel guilty for making the comparison, but it’s like being a child of an addict. All everyone does at family events is talk about current TV shows. I literally feel disgusted when I see someone watching a sitcom. (Not saying this the correct attitude to have, but this is my feeling.)
Can relate to this, estranged dad died a while ago now. But he was never really a big part of my life as I saw him one weekend per month as my parents split while I was a baby. Got roped into one of the three shifts of being at the hospital with him (cancer, took a couple of months) as he didn’t have anyone else, hadn’t spoken to him for several years before that.
Being told that he at least didn’t fuck up with me and my older brother (have a far younger half brother who has been involved in serious crime since his early teens) when he did fuck all to raise us was incredibly infuriating. I did more to raise my younger brother than he ever did despite only seeing him one weekend per month. Taking an active interest in what your kids like instead of treating them like a nuisance you have to pay for does wonders in getting to know them.
Having to offer emotional support to that overgrown baby who had never offered me the courtesy of the same just made me feel more resentful. There is something surreal about holding the emaciated husk of your father sobbing on your shoulder and feel nothing. Was more relieved than anything when he died. Him dying surrounded not by people who love him, but people who were there out of a sense of obligation was a reminder to not end up like him.
Sorry for the slow reply. I had work.
That’s really shit you had to attend your dad’s treatment. Ya my family is mostly functional, so at least he’s on ok terms with everyone else. I made general offers of “let me know if you need help”, but no one needed anything. The worst for you must have been no apology from your dad, no? Ya I had a better father than you did. Thanks for taking care of your brother.
I feel mild shades of this. My family are at least kinda interested, but no matter how much I explain they don’t get it.
They don’t get why I’m not a striver trying to make boatloads of money, why I bike rather than drive, why I’m not dating anyone (I’m closeted to them but I’m also actually not dating anyone lol), why I care about shit basically, why I believe in people, and why I value my friends on the same level or higher than family. I don’t even get fully into politics with them, though I’m getting there. And the one of the bunch I’d say I’m most similar to in a lot of ways, and who I feel has the most grounded, material analysis of the world, is a big ol’ class traitor.
I don’t think you’re wrong to have mixed or negative feelings towards someone who treated you that way your whole life and didn’t relate to you at all.
Same except my estranged father did go full chud, moved to another country, didn’t get vaccinated, died of covid, zero funeral attendees, no grave
Sorry for the slow reply. I had work.
Wow, that sucks for you. It seems to be a real problem with older men. R/QAnonCasualties is filled with stories. I hope you’re OK after a dad like that.
I’m pretty OK, in the last decade my family and I were all basically no contact with him and he’d send insane messages harassing us etc., and it was a relief he died. The only person who doesn’t think he was a piece of shit is my last grandparent, his mother, but I can tell she didn’t think particularly highly of him
I was estranged from my mother when she died. I didn’t cry or grieve or anything. And I don’t know if my father is still alive—he was born in 1947, the last time I saw him was December of 2017, and I don’t really care.
My dealer is kind of like an adoptive father to me, I shit you not.
Sorry for the slow reply. I had work.
Ya you have it difficult. I’d just say to be around those who care about it, it’s done wonders for me.
I’m in a somewhat similar boat. My dad isn’t dead but super disengaged, haven’t talked to him in decades. Like, a few years after my parents got divorced, I was like 9 and my brother was 6 or 7, my older, already adult sister admonished him for not calling us more often. His response was, they have my number. My older brother’s theory is he’s a (relatively) benevolent sociopath.
He stopped reaching out to me once I said I was fine seeing him but not his new wife (that’s a whole ‘nother story). I didn’t bother keeping up because, why would I put all this emotional labor into a relationship where the other person clearly doesn’t give a shit? What am I going to get out of it other than feeling alienated and unloved? If it was important to him, he’d bother to ask my sister, hey what’s PKMKII’s number?
So yeah, I totally get why you’re not feeling much grief over your dad passing. And yeah, I think everyone fears the possibility that they’re going to repeat the mistakes they saw their parents make. But hey, the fact that you’re recognizing that possibility is a good sign that you’ve got the self-awareness to see when you’re doing that and course correcting.
Besides base level empathy, love is earned, not a privilege
Your dad might have done nothing egregious enough to be a bad person, but if he never did enough emotional work to form a bond with you, you don’t owe him more than you can feel
With that said, indifference could be a defense mechanism
Don’t feel guilt if you don’t feel bad, but at the same time don’t fight it if you feel like you have to mourn, better not to repeat the toxic cycle
Sorry for the slow reply. I had work.
I did a heap of therapy and I’m grateful. It’s been a few days and I don’t feel sad. I guess there’s not much to miss.
I can relate. I went through something similar when my grandmother died when I was in college. At the time, I’d been dealing with some online drama that had seemed devastating and world-shattering. The realization that someone who’d been a cornerstone of my life since I was born was gone, that eventually other people in my life would be gone, and finally I myself would someday be gone forced me to put things into perspective.
Did anything change?
