Would you go to the funeral?

[horseshoe8]

I had a very good relationship with my dad and I know we loved each other but he had Alzheimer’s in the end and hadn’t been well for a while.
Mum has called and let me know, the thing is, since his Alzheimer’s worsened he stopped answering my calls and became unpleasant to me, I know it wasn’t the real him but as I don’t live near him and he didn’t want to know me I grieved the dad I knew a long time ago and it’s been really hard. I was heartbroken but understood it was the disease and tried to remember how he was.

I am in a better place about it all mentally now and as I said I have cried all my tears, grieved the loss of the dad I knew and accepted the rejection as his Alzheimer’s.

I really don’t want to go to his funeral because the man in the box isn’t the man I knew, loved, grieved and remember but I don’t want to cause trouble by not going, how will that look? how will family members feel if I’m not there to support them? What about mum?
I don’t know what to do, am I being selfish? Am I thinking straight or am I going to regret not going? Sorry for all the questions I just feel like he’s been gone a while and I’m battling with the guilt that I’d already let him go.

OP, I am sorry for your loss.

I think that you are making a big mistake. the behaviour when he had alzheimers was not him. It sounds liek you chose to distance yourself and have not been present to help or support your mum or him during this time. That was a choice you made to protect yourself.

The memorial is still valid. of course that man is the man you loved. the disease is gone now and even if you think you have already grieved, the formal process of a memorial can be hugely healing. There's a reason also that many people have memorials of some sort months or even years after someone dies - when the first rawness of grief is passed.

IN addition, being there during the memorial is a way to share your happy memories and experiences with each other and to say goodbye formally and to be there for each other as family and friends.

I grieved the dad I knew a long time ago and it’s been really hard.

Whichever decision you make is ok, as you are allowed to handle loss in the way that works for you. Your needs aren't less important than those of you mum and other family members.

But, could you see the funeral as a belated commemoration of the dad you lost so long ago? It sounds like that was the period of trauma and bereavement, just like the trauma and bereavement that in other circumstances is felt at the actual time of a death. And that earlier trauma needs all the rituals of healing that a funeral might bring.

You deserve whatever solace a funeral might be able to give you for that earlier loss.

My son died after a long period of mental illness. The beginning of that period of illness was so traumatic, and the prospect of him recovering rather than dying seemed so unlikely, that my most intense reaction to the horror of it all was six years before he died, and then daily during that period. I felt numb at his actual death, and hugely confused and guilty about that numbness.
I think I would have managed better if I had given myself permission to mourn his death as the almost incidental endpoint to something that occurred over many years or even a lifetime.

I'm sorry to hear you're in this sad situation....but you really should attend the funeral. It would be spectacularly selfish towards your mum not to go not to mention extremely embarrassing when she would have to explain to other guests why you're not there.

I would definitely attend

Of course you have to go. If nothing else to support your Mum. However, you are far more likely to regret not going than going.

I went to a funeral recently for a lady who had dementia. She’d been married for 50 years and didn’t know her husband. She thought he was a rapist. Incredibly painful for him… they were previously an absolutely devoted couple.

At the funeral the husband and daughters talked about the mum/wife they’d known and loved. There was acknowledgment that she’d been gone for some time.

Sending condolences OP. It’s a destructive and hideous disease, but I think you should go to the funeral.

Very upsetting for you.
But you will be going for your mum, he is gone.
She will so appreciate your support.
What grief for her to have seen such a change in him.

My friends grandmother went from the sweetest, kindest loving mother and grand mother, to a foul mouthed trucker, and aggressive witch, for the last decade of her life.
It was a happy relief when she past.

It is a wicked disease that took him.
He loved you deeply, remember the man he was, not the diseased ravaged sufferer he became.

Mind yourself, he is at peace now.

I would. You’ve not had a
chqnce to say goodbye to your loving dad who was taken over by the dreadful disease, I’d use the time and space to reflect on the good times and grieve those times, your later dad was no Longer dad, sadly he’d gone by then

Yabu because the state of the relationship between the two of you at the end wasn't his fault, he had a medical condition.

I am sorry for your loss. Dementia is cruel and its like grieving twice. My mum was awful to me at times but she was also confused, scared and very poorly.

You have to separate your dad from his illness. During the two years my mum was suffering from progressive vascular dementia it was hard to see her as she was before. While she remembered me she would blame me for leaving her in he home/hospital. When she stopped remembering me and I just became the nice lady who visited that was hard in a different way. When she died, the old memories of her started to come back and planning the funeral and reminiscing at the wake helped start the healing process.

Go.

I don't understand why you wouldn't. Yes, you did much of your grieving some time ago, and it's difficult when a family member with dementia takes against you (my grandmother, who lived with us when I was a child, said such cruel things to me in her later years that even though I knew she had dementia, I've never been able to forget them), but the funeral is a celebration of your father's whole life, including the majority of your life when he knew who you were and loved you.

My f was a horrible man. We were nc for the last 20 years, I went to his funeral though because funerals are not for the dead. They won't know anything about it.

I was there to support my dm, while she saw him into the ground.

The man at the end of his life was not your dad, and it really helped me to seperate out the man my dad was before he was ill (lovely, funny, caring) and the man he was once illness claimed him (paranoid, violent, grumpy). But the funeral is not for him. The funeral is for everyone else that is left behind, including you. I would go. I'm sorry for your loss.

You’re judging his whole life on how he was in the last few years with a horrible illness? At a funeral you remember the good times, the nice part of him. It would probably be very good for you to go and remember that.

I am not going to my Dad's funeral for different reasons.

If my mum was alive I would go to support her only.

Would you regret it afterwards if you didn't go ?

Will you see other family members there?

Yes, go. The “man in the box” is the man you knew and loved, it was only his mind that was unwell towards the end. His spirit was always the same. Go out of respect for all of the life and love you shared before he became unwell. Go to support your mother and all of your father’s other relatives and friends. Go because you won’t realise how much attending his funeral will mean to you until after you go.

I would attend the funeral. Neither my Dad nor my FIL were originally like the ‘man in the box became’ because they both had dementia and the disease damaged their brain. They were lovely people and I had a great relationship with them before they became ill. Many of us have family members dying from dementia and we just remember how they used to be, not what they became.

In time, you may regret it if you don’t go and you won’t be able to change that.

Go for your mum. But also, go for yourself. At some point you’ll come to realise how the man he was in those last few years wasn’t his fault and doesn’t erase the man he was all the years before.

If you already feel you’ve grieved, that’s okay. I think the only real reason to avoid the funeral would be if you’re scared to open that wound, meaning you aren’t as over it as you think you are. But that’s okay too. This is the right time to go and give him his moment. Honour who he was, don’t let the disease steal more from you than it already has.

Yes to remember him before the horrible disease took over. And to support your Mum.

Condolences and best wishes.

I’m so sorry for your loss and the trauma of his disease. There isn’t a reasonable or unreasonable in this situation. Funerals are a celebration of life. How do you feel about celebrating the life of your Father, outside of his cruel disease? That’s not minimising the hurt and pain it caused, but it wasn’t your Dad, it was the damage from the Alzheimer’s.

If you were my friend, I would rather you regret attending than regret not going.

I would go. I’d picture my true dad in the box, he can go back to being that person now, you don’t have to think of the man he became ever again. Pay honour to the man you loved and be there for your family. It is only a day in your life.

I live a 3 and a half hour drive so mum comes to visit for a week twice a year and we go down and vist for a week twice a year.
This always worked well for the children with half terms/ end of terms/ Christmas and summer holidays.
When we visited dad stayed in his room and insisted that I don’t enter and mum will come and visit us alone. She would get a carer in and we sometimes holiday together to give her a break.

I didn’t make a choice, dad became very content in his own company towards the end and would get quite irritable at the sight of me and ask me to go away, it was like he didn’t know who I was but he didn’t like me and even though we would often chat weekly on the phone, all calls eventually went unanswered but I always maintained weekly chats with mum and supported her as I could, she always said it was the best thing I could do that I was always on the phone and we’d speak for over an hour and she enjoyed a weeks break at ours seeing the grandchildren because it gave her a break which is also why we took her on our holidays.
We

My Mum had dementia for 12 years. At times, especially in the last few years when the disease was in it's last stage, it felt like forever. But it wasn't. It was a tiny proportion of her life.
Planning her funeral allowed me, my siblings and our dc to refocus on the years prior to Alzheimers and as a result we were able to reset as it were. Mum was SO much more than the dementia and although I grieved throughout those 12 years, at her funeral I was grieving her.
The box holds the physical remains but you hold the memories. You can choose which memories to treasure and which to leave behind. Allow the painful ones created by dementia to be burned or buried along with the box. And hold dear all the good ones

OP, my deepest condolences.

I am living with a man whose body I married nearly 50 years ago. He hasn’t been him for many years now so when he dies (if I am still alive) I will understand the body in the box isn’t him. I have grieved for the man I married many times. He is now selfish, inconsiderate, rude, and many other negative things he never used to be.

My ‘advice’ would be to go to the funeral if you think you would be able to support your mother and other family members. Don’t spare a thought for the body in the box but celebrate the man you remember as your Dad who, I believe, you loved. Be there for your Mum and celebrate her release, because I expect she will feel a huge release from the burden of the man he became, and, as I said, celebrate the man you remember. It wasn't really him who rejected you.

My dad was objectively awful to me in his final years for reasons I won't bother to go into ... previously though he was a great dad. I of course went to his funeral....never occured to me not to.

Sometimes grief can feel easier if we try to remember them as awful people...it feels less painful in a way...anger rather than sadness. But I really think you must go