I think I disagree with pretty much every sentence of your post. But I don’t have much further to add beyond that.
Sounds tragic from both sides - you desperately wanted to hear “I’m sorry” and I can imagine that your father desperately wanted to hear “I forgive you.”
In case anyone else is wondering what happened with the OP (who didn’t come back to the thread), I found a post in another thread where Palo Verde said he did go to see his father but his father died before he got there. He doesn’t say whether “before” was days or hours or minutes.
I also disagree with TruCelt. Every low-life druggie slut baby-daddy criminal we see on Cops or Springer or Maury or America’s Dumbest Whatever (don’t judge me!) is someone’s child. Maybe their parents gave up on them too soon, but at some point, adults are responsible for their own damn selves.
We went through several generations of this in our family. When my (abusive) grandfather died, it was rather sudden, it was discovered that he had cancer and he was dead within two months. It was only well after my father died that my mom said that she wishes she had made her peace with her father. The man didn’t own up to anything up to the day he died.
When my (abusive) father, he never faced the reality of what he did. Later, when my (abusive) uncle was dying (see below), my mother asked me what advice I would give to my cousins to make peace with their father before he died. This is the first I learned that she had made peace with my father, but as is typical for her, it would never had occurred to talk to us about it while my father was still alive.
Not that it would have changed. I didn’t even bother trying to talk to him about what he did. Anyone who is that much of a beast will never get getter.
After my uncle died, I talked to my aunt about it, and it looks like he didn’t take responsibility or apologize to his wife or kids. I asked my aunt if he had ever while he was alive and she said never.
As they say, dying doesn’t make you a saint. It just makes you dead.
I’m really sorry, StillAngry.
I was estranged from my mother for about a year before she died. I did not go see her and she did not call me and ask me to come. My sister urged me to go stating that I would regret it if I didn’t. It is seven years later and I still don’t regret not going. There was too much water under the bridge and not enough time to fix it. I would have wanted her to say “sorry” and she would have wanted me to say “sorry”, neither of which would have happended. Sometimes you just need to let it go and as long as you have that, there is no point in stirring the waters by going. I’m sorry things didn’t turn out as you had hoped. Peace is such an elusive thing.
I had not been back to this message board since my last post…I sort of wanted it all to go away.
I do not wish to get in to a flame war with anyone, but since Fotheringay-Phipps asked, I will provide some context.
It is exactly as TrueCelt described.
My parents divorced and my mother was unfortunate to have been living in Cook County Illinois during the time of the Greylord scandal Operation Greylord - Wikipedia where judges took brides in exchange for favorable judgments. The judge in her divorce case was tried, convicted and sentenced to jail. We have no proof that my father or his attorney bribed the judge, but even by 1976 standards my mother was given a very raw deal and the judge was sentanced.
After the divorce my father failed to make alimony or child support payments. He made exactly 7 monthly payments over a course of 5 years. My mother’s attempts to take him to court were constantly undermined (extensions, excuses for why my father did not show) and he was never arrested or spent any time in jail for failure to pay child support - it was a different time in the 70’s than it is now.
So, after failing to make child support or alimony payments, not surprisingly my mother began to fall behind on her mortgage and we were forced to move. My mother worked 3 jobs at the time and we barely got by - this was in no way a case of anyone “over spending” - there was not enough to feed the four of us much less buy lavish things.
As my parents held the lien to the house in joint tenancy, my mother NEEDED my fathers signature in order to sell the house. He blackmailed her in to giving up any legal right to child support in order for him to sign. SO in his mind, it was OK to force us out of our home, and then subsequently blackmail our mother in to giving up future child support (she did so easily as he was not paying anyway - blood from a stone). To add insult to injury, he legally was entitled to half the capital gains (increase in equity value).
There is no other way to interpret his actions and I was old enough to know what was going on and who’s fault it was. Irrespective of that, my mother worked very hard trying to ensure that we were able to have a relationship with my father, she went out of her way to try and NOT paint him as the bad guy. He managed to do that all by himself. I wont go in to detail about the numerous egregious actions he has made during our lifetime but will sum it up with this comment. When I called him after my high school graduation (at that time I had not seen him for over 4 years) and he picked up the phone I said “hi this is {name changed} Steve” and he replied “Steve who” and I said “Steve, your son” and his answer was “oh, that Steve - what do you want”. That is verbatim. He was not a good person.
I am now using the past tense as he died this morning. For him all I can say is that he seemed to be free of pain and suffering and had his brother there with him.
I posted my response to this thread on 12-12, the same weekend after having seen my father. Since then I have run the gamut of emotional responses. The lingering emotion is sadness. Sadness over the life he led, sad that he was unable to reconcile or reach out, sad for his brother needing to provide hospice for him, sad for him. There is nothing I need to forgive or let go, it is what it is, and I am who I am because of those experiences, and I am quite content with who I am.
Also, to be clear, there was no “beating up a dying man”. He was well aware of the fact that our visit might include discussing the pain he caused - he was prepared for that and invited us to see him, and speak our mind. For all his faults, at least he gave us that - one last opportunity to say what was on our minds, and had been for decades. As I wrote to this board, I contemplated many actions - including punching him in the face (seriously). And in the end it was some sage advice from this board that encouraged me to be open minded and approach this as an opportunity and see where it goes. I let him dictate the tenor of the conversation, I did not come see him “guns blazing” so to speak. Even in my approach to “pressing him” in to facing the realities of the life he led was done so with care and concern and respect for the situation he was in (hospice). As I wrote previously, in the end, I decided to give him the kindest words I could come up with “wishing him peace, freedom from pain and to be surrounded by loved ones”. That was a lot more than he ever gave me.
I don’t want anyone reading this to assume my path was correct or the only option - even my own brothers and I approached the situation differently. My older brother was willing to hug him, and call him dad, and tell him he forgave him. My older brother shared pictures of his wife and daughters with him. My older brother did not stop me from saying what I wanted to, nor did I stop him from engaging our father as he did. In fact it probably helped. Knowing what my brother was providing our father, allowed me to feel comfortable with the approach I took.
Again, there is no magic solution or set in stone path when confronted with the opportunity to re-engage with an estranged parent. Each persons situation is unique, no one is right, and no one is wrong. I just hope that others that find this post find in it encouragement to look inside their hearts and do what is best for themselves (including not visiting an estranged, dying parent like zombimommy) and to understand that if you do decide to visit an estranged/dying parent, that you may not get what you want out of the situation, but that what you do get, may be valuable, healing and worthwhile. For me, I have reconnected with cousins, aunts and uncles that I have not spoken with in over 20 years…and if that is the only silver lining out of this entire mess, then that is pretty good for me.
Thanks.
I’m sorry you had to suffer this much through the years. You seem to have a very mature perspective, and I hope you find inner peace.