Father died alone with several tumors

[Applecake99]

I’ve been feeling pretty sad for a few weeks now, and I keep thinking about my father. He died a few months ago. He had multiple tumors and died alone in the hospital. I lived far away from him, but I wasn’t planning to visit anyway.

For context, my father was horrible. I had a traumatic childhood living with him. He used drugs and had alcohol problems. My sister and I lived with him, and our mother was not in the picture.

When we finally left home, we decided never to speak to him again. However, many years later, I decided to call him, maybe seeking peace or wanting to close that chapter. He was in a terrible financial situation, and I decided to help him. But after a few months, he kept asking for more and more money. That broke my heart, and I decided to block him and stop sending him money or having any contact.

A few months ago, one of his friends reached out to tell me he was in the hospital, but I didn’t want to know anything. He died there alone. I didn’t cry then, and I’m not crying now, but I can’t stop thinking about his last moments. He probably had a terrible time before dying, with all his financial problems, and I don’t know how to close this.

It’s actually quite a normal reaction OP.

My therapist told me to prepare for either feeling absolutely nothing after my mother died or feeling absolutely guilt and shame for the thoughts I had about her while she was alive.

Ultimately when she died I still felt nothing and still do feel nothing. I consider myself really fortunate. So my recommendation would be to see something who se expertise is in trauma.

You’re mourning the father you should have had and deserved. While he was alive there was a chance he’d redeem himself.
Look after yourself.

He was in hospital so his pain would have been managed as much as possible. The staff will have been very kind to him.

He would have been looked after in hospital. You could do with some therapy around this.

@Applecake99 I agree with PPs. Your father was cared for by professionals in hospital. They are good at this and his suffering was probably minimal.

The person who needs compassion and care is you. You were let down by both your parents. You tried to fix the relationship with him and he failed you again. I really recommend some grief therapy to explore this and come to terms with your past. In some situations it’s ok to not be ok about things that happened and this sounds like a good example.

Take care.

Mourn your childhood and not the monster that created misery.

There is nothing bad about "dying alone" and, in fact, that's exactly what many of us want. It's calm and peaceful. Your father will have had pain relief, and hospital staff to take care of him. I think that's a pretty good way to go.

Seconding the advice to have grief counselling. While you may not be mourning your father, you are likely strongly grieving the life you didn’t have, should have had and wish you had.

Death is a funny thing. My own dm died when dd was three so I had to explain things to her. One thing I told her is that death is the greatest adventure as it is always done alone and we don’t know what we would find.

But what I didn’t realise then was that there was another adventure too. A very personal adventure. That which we, those left behind, would take and that we wouldn’t know what we would (or wouldn’t) find inside ourselves as we travelled the road. And every death we experience is a different adventure as we always start each adventure through grief from a different starting point.

It’s taken me until now to articulate all that to myself.

This.

Perfectly normal reaction in this scenario. You are entitled to all the feelings.

I rarely jump to Therapy, but it may help you process all the different feelings and make sense of it all.