To feel so sorry for my Dad?

[Kneehigim]

First up, he's happy, in a relationship the past 25 years and healthy.

However.

When he was a teen he moved to London to work on building sites and was there for 6 months. He then got a call to say that his father was ill and that he needed to go home to run the family business. At the same time his uncle offered to bring him to Australia with a job opportunity there.

In the heel of the hunt he went home and still runs the family business. He's a 'make the most of it' kind of person so appears happy, but whenever we chat, there's a deep longing in him for what might have been. He never fails to mention the opportunities he almost had. I think we just chat a lot so he probably doesn't actually consciously think this on a daily basis, maybe I bring out the worst in him lol. We probably have deeper conversations than most people.

So, I'm at that age in life where I can make it or break it. I've a few decisions to make. I genuinely don't want to end up 70 and a little bit sad about what I never did.

There is literally nothing I can do for my Dad apart from to succeed myself in life which cheers him up no end. I can hear the pride in his voice (and I have done nothing to be proud of).

I don't even know why I'm posting. There's nothing I can do. AIBU to be fucking annoyed with his father for stealing his future from him? What the fuck do we do to our children. Such a responsibility we hold in our hands!

Wah! I'm just ranting.

In fact unless he has a mega farm with a farm manager, it makes sense to sell.

I know that I made a wild stab at the farming thing, but how on earth do you extrapolate that?

Well you've all correctly guessed the nature of the business. It's not a massive outfit, no. All my ancestors farmed until their death beds and I suspect he will too.

There is very much a sense of community among the farmers, but I think he misses his day job (he was a manager in a factory). He worked on the building sites again before the boom/bust and earned £250 a day which was a novelty to him I guess. He claims that is what he would have loved to have done for his life.

As I said, it's a difficult one, he's my Dad, a lovely happy gentleman, but I never ever knew or would have suspected that this wasn't the life he wanted.
I suppose as children you presume that what your parents are doing is what they have chosen to do.

Building site work has went through boom and bust. He would have had times of fairly long unemployment if he had stuck at that work.

Maude Small family farms these days struggle to make money. It is becoming a harder way of life, and unless you have diversified and are selling say produce made from what you farm, then income is likely to keep reducing in real terms.

OP family farms for men his age had many positives. There were many good things about his way of life.

I remember asking dd when she was 3 a sort of quiz thing and one of the questions was 'What is Mammy's favourite thing to do?' Her answer? Work.
I can assure you that it's not my favourite thing, but I suppose, just like my child, you see what people do the most and assume that's their favourite thing? I think it was the same with Dad. I always presumed he loved farming. He certainly never complained. So it was news to me really that he actually fucking hated it lol.

Claire, yes, after the bust, he went back to the meagre income of farming!

And lots of factories closed, so he would likely have been made unemployed from his day job anyway.
I understand his wistfulness, just saying that the jobs he enjoyed before taking on the farm, would not have continued the same anyway.
Its like thinking back to being 20 wistfully as a time pre kids, but forgetting that without kids your life would have changed anyway and not been like it was at 20.

Hate is a strong word. My brother is a paediatrician and he will discuss cows calving with my brother like as if they're discussing the same species.
My dbro will come out with suitably long words to describe dilation or something and Dad is happy as the proverbial pig telling my dbro everything he needs to know.

I then comment on the price of turnips, to stick my tuppenceworth in.

We have great craic in our gaff lol.

Christ. We sound like the most dysfunctional family ever! We are.

This is really a narrative about not having a strong enough sense of self to carve out the life you really want, as opposed to want others want for you.

Perhaps that’s what you’re mulling over - having the strength to go after what you want.

I'm not sure. I don't even know what I want. So I don't think it's that. It's just genuine sadness about my Dad. Maybe now that he's older, I sort of know he's not going to be around forever and I'm the one who's sad, not him. Maybe it's that I see my future in him and don't want to make the same mistakes.

OP, your post reminds me of my grandad. He left Ireland intending to go to America with his wife. He stopped over in Liverpool and never left. They had a hard start there but had a few kids and were happy. But there was always that unspoken wondering about what could have been if they'd completed the journey to America.

My own parents were emigrating to Canada when they found out that I was on the way! They stayed here, but every now and again we all wonder what it would have been like in Canada.

I hope I never tell my dd in 20 years time that I wish I had done this that or the other. I need to just do it. It's not as easy as it appears though! Maybe my Dad would never have made it in Australia. Maybe. I think he would. But who knows. Anyway, the path of life has drawn him down this course and there's no backing out now. He's the best Dad ever though, so at least he has achieved something.

AIBU to be fucking annoyed with his father for stealing his future from him?

I think that’s really unfair!

We all have to make choices in life and live with the consequences. Perhaps your DF should be celebrating the positives that he has achieved, rather than the negatives or things that he hasn't done. Someone once told me - don't wait to travel when you retire, because you cannot guarantee your health. If your father wants to travel now, he should make plans to achieve that goal.

My brother is a paediatrician and he will discuss cows calving with my brother like as if they're discussing the same species

Pretty much the same with my dh (dairy) and nct classes/midwives when I was pregnant. Midwife said dairy farmers were the worst because they know far too well that things can and do go wrong. Their discussion about the taste of amniotic fluid was stunning!

The obvious question OP, is who is the successor? I'm assuming probably not the paediatrician brother. Is it you? Do you have additional siblings to further complicate things?

My father does though. That's the thing. I don't think that anyone apart from my self knows how he feels! He lives a good life, he really does, he's very healthy (probably healthier than me), he is happy and enjoys life. I don't think it's something he dwells on at all. It just came up randomly in conversation. He never has expressed it before and you would never know that's what he thinks. He genuinely is happy with his life now but I suppose maybe he had young dreams and then life got in the way.

You must be very lucky in life OP have been able to do all the things you desired. For most of us life has other plans. It’s really not rare at all that someone in the winter of their life has had disappointment and plans fallen through. Tbh it sounds like your dad plays on the “poor me, I sacrificed my dreams for my family” narrative and you’ve bought into it.

The paediatrician (professor ahem) is heir to the throne.

Bondi. It was one conversation. But my Dad is like that, he can say something in one sentence that you know means the world to him. He's an odd character. He never ever ever sought sympathy. It would be just when I'd be talking about stuff, he'd reminisce.

You'd have to know my father to know that he is the most gregarious outgoing individual going. As a father he was always a tower of strength. It's only now I guess that he maybe can say what he feels. I don't know. There is absolutely no way on this worldly earth that my father would ever play the victim or be the victim. He is a man's man and a very strong man emotionally. But there is a vulnerability in him that I've only just noticed and it might be because he has decided he's getting older or something. He is 100% sure he will live to be over 100. And I pray to God he will and then some! But that's the kind of man he is. He never ever would lay blame on us or anyone, nor would he be the type to make us think that we were a burden.

Goodness, you have a real God complex about your father. We’re you estranged from him for a period of time as a child?

"This is really a narrative about not having a strong enough sense of self to carve out the life you really want"

People had a greater sense of duty and taking their 'rightful' place in Society.

I'm 51, even in my generation of Women, lower WC, deprived city etc, there's a massive sense that we haven't achieved what we could have, given the chance. Very few people did.

Go back each generation and it's even more so. Except for those who fought in a War, there's more gratitude among them, for what they have.

My Sister is suffering accepting the choices she made, she's now 62. You blink and your chance is gone.

But thinking about it, there were lots of diseases etc around that weren't curable. There for but the grace of God, go many who lived through the Aids years.

That's without accidents and murders. Look how many gap year students and people in dream holidays, are killed.

Your Dad has had a steady life and income. No-one's knows if the other imagined life would have even measured up.

As you get older, you have to count your blessings. Thinking on a global scale, most people have a good life and then there's having gratitude for getting older.

No. He was there every day. Albeit for minutes in the evening.

I'm starting to think that this is more about me than about my Dad!

A shrink would have a field day with this lol.