My father's wife just died. Looking for advice on what to do

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

Which is great, but “not being hateful” doesn’t require you to invest half of your current life in taking care of somebody who has apparently not given a rat’s ass about you for the last thirty years.

This is not about stuff your dad has done that’s over and done with in the long-ago past, but the indifference and lack of remorse apparently still present in the person he is now. If that’s the sort of person he is—and I say “if”, because I’m well aware that I have no actual knowledge of your personal situation, and my reading could be totally wrong—then being kind to him, and even making significant sacrifices to be kind to him, will not cause him to start caring about you or wanting to atone to you for the past.

Would the people who do give a rat’s ass about you be okay with your suddenly dropping out of their lives for half the week to take care of your estranged father, anyway?

22

Short answer - no.
Medium answer - hell no.
Long answer - The man abandoned you and your siblings with an impoverished, drug addicted mother so he could pursue hedonism.

AFAICT, (and feel free to correct me, of course) he has not taken responsibility for this decision he made when he was 40 years old, and has not attempted to make amends or pursue a close relationship with you and your siblings despite having decades to do so. He, instead, has leaned into a situation that has kept him separate from you for 30+ years.

BTW, re-reading your OP, don’t blame the church. He was a grown-ass man when he joined, 50 years old, he CHOSE to push your family to the wayside, and kept making that choice.

You said “we live in Saint Paris”, I imagine the “we” includes people you care about? Do not abandon them for your father, this is your choice to make. Go ahead and visit, but don’t entertain the idea of putting your life on hold for him, it’s not fair to you or the ones you love.

23

Why would you do this? Do you want to? Do you have some cultural model that says the younger generation must sacrifice for their elders - no matter what?

Blood IS thicker than water. But IMO, the increased duty towards family is a rebuttable presumption. And your father well rebutted any presumption in his favor.

Sure, move in with him - if that is what YOU want to do. But do so with low expectations.

I think a weekly phone call and an occasional visit is all - likely more than - you owe this guy. Don’t be a martyr. Or - if you choose to be one, at least admit it.

24

I would like to think that after your visit with him, you will have a clearer idea of how you feel and what you might want to do.

FWIW, he abandoned you for a totally different life and, from what you’ve posted, he seems to have had no regrets about that. Nor does he seem to have made any attempt to restore relations with you or your siblings. To my mind, you have no obligation towards him aside from pity for the situation he now finds himself in.

There seems very little reason for you to be turning your life upside down for someone who doesn’t appear to care about you, and may well not wish to have any kind of contact in the future.

25

Entirely up to you. You owe him nothing. If you think re-connecting with him will answer your questions or give you closure of some kind. Go for it.

If not then there is nothing to feel guilty about. There is absolutely zero obligation on your part of any kind.

26

My maternal grandfather was born in ~1917. My maternal grandmother was born in ~1919. They started a family early in their marriage. Though they lost one child in infancy, they eventually had five children.

When the kids were about ages 16 down to age 3, my grandmother felt overwhelmed by the responsibility. She left. She never came back.

My grandfather had to drop out of University of Michigan.

My grandmother met, dated, and married ‘exciting’ and ‘adventurous’ men – one who worked abroad, giving my grandmother the opportunity to live a ‘cosmopolitan’ life. Another played music. All pretty much either gambled, drank, or both. That appealed to my grandmother.

My grandfather struggled desperately to raise the kids, leaning inappropriately on the eldest – my mother – to assume more responsibility than she ever could have or should have. She got out as soon as she could, and in the only way she could: she married my father … far too young and immature, and under inauspicious circumstances (his father had recently committed suicide over learning of his wife’s (my other (ie, paternal) grandmother) infidelity.

As the five kids got older, they gravitated toward their mother, who – by all traditional definitions – had never been, and still wasn’t, a “mother.”

My grandmother ended up with a slightly-less-than-okay man who – after he stopped drinking for good – didn’t smack her around any more. Which … y’know … is nice, I guess.

She stayed in that marriage and predeceased her husband. She was quite dependent on her children (among other things, she had never learned to drive, and – IIRC – never had a paying job).

TL;DR: my grandmother was charismatic as hell, and whip-smart. Everybody loved her. Though each and all of her five kids would have been forgiven for having written her off for good (for leaving them all when they were just kids) and never having contact with her, they each decided that nobody won in that scenario.

These things are horrendously complicated and terribly sad (you have my sympathies on a handful of levels).

But put me with those who say you have to do what’s best for you in this situation, and what you can best live with long after your father leaves this Earth.

I wish you peace.

27

^ This.

And what you are suggesting be your next step will be a slippery slope for sure. I have seen it with a friend of mine after his elderly mother moved in: “Oh she’s no bother, all we have to do is give her meds and feed her” to “man, I have unclogged the toilet three times today from all that toilet paper” to “we have to bring a nurse a few times a week to bath her” to “my wife is ready to leave me unless we put her in a proper care facility”. Care needs for the elderly never get easier. Never.

If he needs care and wants to re-enter your life, let him move closer to you and into a care facility where you live. I am just not understanding the sense of duty in this case - do you feel sorry for him?

28

You can probably rely on them to take advantage of the situation as he grows less competent. They might not help, but depending on how they’re managing their addictions, they might well cause additional problems.

I don’t think you owe him any more (or less) than any other human being, so I don’t have useful advice. I just wanted to point at the red flag: with your stepmother gone, they may have less restraint.

29

It sounds like you have an innate desire to connect with him because of the familial relationship between you too. But it’s likely that he doesn’t feel that same core emotion. I suspect that if you tried to reconnect with him, the relationship would be mostly one-sided. He would use you for his own needs and wouldn’t really reciprocate. You might feel good because you’re helping him out and he’s your father, but don’t expect to get much back from him. If you interact with him, realize he is who he is and don’t expect him to change. This is real life, not a Hallmark movie where there’s always a happy ending.

30

Might I suggest consulting with a licensed clinical therapist? That might help you figure out what you “should” do.

I am putting ‘should’ in quotes because there really is no right or wrong thing, it’s really up to you to figure out what will make you most comfortable when you look back on this in years to come.

31

I was with you on the short & medium answers but as to the long answer people make mistakes & are either too embarrassed by them to bring them up again or just don’t know how to apologize. I’m not saying that is the case here but it could be.

32

This is what I think, as someone estranged from both parents, including a deadbeat Dad.

Parents have a magical ability to instill guilt into their children. In about 98% of cases, this guilt has no real-world justification.

This is a case where you get to do what you want to do. If you have a genuine desire to see and support your father, by all means, do it - but don’t go in naive. It might be a horrible disappointment, but if you want to do it to at least say you tried, that’s valid.

If you want to do it because you feel like you owe him something, you are hereby released from any and all obligation toward him. You owe him nothing. Your guilt is not grounded in anything real, it’s just a natural part of having a shitty parent.

If you want to do it because you hope it’s going to magically transform your relationship, be advised that it probably won’t.

These types of events have a tendency to stir up a lot of old feelings. Find someone you trust, personally or professionally, to help you get through this tough spot. My best wishes to you.

33

FWIW: I’ve been told that Honor Thy Father And Mother consists of seeing to it that they have food to eat and a roof over their head. On that score, you have nothing needing to be done at this point. I hope you don’t consider yourself duty-bound, and that you would be pursuing a relationship only because you wanted that, not because you feel you should.

ETA: what she said ^

34

I have a decent relationship with my dad, who is a tiny bit younger than yours, and definitely similar here:

The amount of frustration involved in taking care of a parent that I basically like is immense. At 85, your dad is only going to get less capable, both of what he wants to do and in his capacity to assess it. Decision-making skills aren’t as good even when general cognition and memory still are. An 85-year-old man is not a project to take on unless you’re willing to sacrifice a lot.

I’d suggest counselling first to ascertain what you can feel good about having done or walked away from when he’s gone, and then doing that.

35

I have a friend who is a Presbyterian minister. After I told him about my parents, he said, “Sometimes the best thing you can do to honor your father and mother is not talk to them.”

I’m not religious though.

I think a lot of us who have parental wounds, there will always be a part of us that wants our Mom or our Dad. But the more introspection I do, the more it seems I want my idealized version of a parent, not the one I actually had.

I just get similar vibes from the OP as I have with my own biological father, who is a drunk. For a long time I felt guilty for how little I feel for him. I tried having a relationship out of a sense of obligation but it wasn’t fulfilling, it was boring at best and frustrating at worst. I haven’t talked to him in at least ten years. I still sort of feel guilty about that. He never did anything horrible to me, he just prioritized his drinking over me and we have nothing in common. So I’m often thinking like, I should forgive him, I should reach out to him, blah blah but every time I do he always turns out to be exactly the same as he’s always been: just this drunk loser with zero self-insight. And it fails to feel fulfilling and that’s why it’s been ten years. I can’t manufacture caring for him no matter how hard I try.

So when I read the OP I kinda got that vibe. Like, “I don’t really like this guy and he fucked me over, but you know, he’s my Dad.” But I think those first two things make the third thing irrelevant. No kid owes their parent a relationship. If they wanted one so bad they should have put more effort into their parenting.

36

Also, this:

That’s textbook narcissism. People like that almost never change.

Ah, the other thing I find relatable is that your father left you in a bad situation. I often ask myself would I have experienced so much childhood trauma if my Dad was remotely engaged with my life? It was partly his responsibility to ensure nothing bad happened to me, and he failed at that, and I guess I am kinda mad.

Seriously, fuck these guys!