To avoid having my father to stay again?

[mrsgregorypeck]

The back story: my parents divorced when I was eleven. I waited for my father to contact me. Radio silence for nineteen years when I , foolishly thinking there had perhaps been a misunderstanding, phoned him, having got the number from my paternal grandmother. He visited a week later to say that unless his wife was also invited and made welcome, he wouldn't be visiting again.

Fast forward(!) almost thirty years. Contacted me to ask if they could come for lunch. Visited with wife looking throughout like a chihuahua chewing a wasp. I was also asked to visit where wife ignored me or was unpleasant. Took to her bed in a fit of pique by Saturday lunchtime.

She died last year. Alarmed by his grief, I bought him an iPad. Since then, I have disabled Skype on my phone since he was attempting to Skype me every day. He skypes my brother every single morning but I claimed to have difficulty with the settings so it doesn't work.

He has just been here for a week. No presents or card. Little digs about wastefulness and late rising. No interest in me, my family or my life, really. He wanted me to look at all his photos of where he and wife ( now to be known as CCAW) have visited over the years.
Some things are just not fixable, are they?
Thanks for reading.

It won't happen, though, will it?

Probably not.

I think just like who we used to be was scribbled over, rubbed out and redrawn by the events that started the crack that became the chasm, so too were they.

Maybe some of us have moments, where glimpses of both they and their lost parent (as they both used to be) can be had..

But I think most of us are probably grieving badly for a lost parent, while gazing in confusion at a kind of "look a like" , trying to will who they were back to life. Then bashing face first into old and fresh hurt when they can't be who they aren't anymore.

Don't think there are any easy answers. God knows since learning of my father's death I have flailed around trying to work out what those answers would have been. But I come back empty handed from excursions into the back of my brain looking for missed solutions that would have make everything work and have saved me from the hurt of a lack of resolution.

I have no suggestions about seeing him, or not. I think you need to go with your gut on that score. But maybe allowing ourselves to grieve in the now, acknowledging that it is a form of grief, is the only answer on the table.

Seems odd I know, but the voice I had known all my life, the face I recognised as well as my own, left me unable to accept and process that my dad was gone. Long, long before he died.

Some very poignant and thought provoking replies here. I think for me it is a reluctance to accept that someone can be so incredibly self-centred and callous throughout his whole life. And to accept that my father doesn't really give a damn about me except as someone to listen to the anecdotes of his and CCAW's travels.

reluctance to accept

I think it is probably very common for there to be a tension between the tangible evidence of who the person is ...and who we are still hoping against hope they might be under the surface of what we can see of them.

You have spent many many years waiting. More than once. Which leaves a lot of time for hope against hope to build. Letting go of hope & acknowledging unmet expectations will never be met, is hard.

I suppose because it can look like a door to a place where hope has died and fully embracing the truth is unavoidable. A truth that can be perceived as as warm, comforting and cuddly as a slab of pre-chilled granite.

I am in no position to suggest this. Because I haven't done it, despite some form of counselling being suggested to me regularly and often. But maybe managing the transition from hope to acceptance is not best suited to DIY. Maybe it needs a guide.

Kind of sucks (IMO) the only guide seems to be counselling.

There is A Dummies Guide To Beating Sugar Addiction in their self-help section. Also ones for PTSD and OCD, so it's not like they shy away from more difficult and complicated high stakes issues.

But so far I haven't turned up a copy of A Dummies a Guide to managing the tangled lump of feelings of (now adult) children whose parent fucked off and left them cos the OW/M was far more interesting.

I think they are missing a trick. We are a sizeable group (and one that appears to be growing). Based on not much more than noticing how my reluctance to take this to a counsellor seems to be non-unique when I talk to people in a similar boat, a self help section focused on managing the issues and road blocks we tend to face as a group would probably be quite profitable.