I suppose because of wistfulness really. Regret for what could have been, had my adoptive mother lived; a loving father. The reality is that he might have been less loving than I would have realised given how easily he's shoved everyone out of his life from before he met his second wife. But - I wouldn't have known it, had she lived. Would have been happy in the illusion probably (though I do wonder if his controlling tendancies would have caused trouble). Sometimes in truth, I would compromise a more realistic view of him for the sake of half-truth, half-illusion.
Impossible to know, but I suspect my adoptive mother never realised quite how shallow his attachments are (far as I can work out now, after she died he just told the undertaker to dispose of her ashes; many years later I found where they are scattered, don't think he knows or cares). He didn't bother going to his only sibling's husband's funeral or ash-scattering either . Or any of the funerals of his long-term friends from before his second marriage.
Because of the expectations that you still keep contact with family, I guess, though they shouldnt weigh on me I know.
Because I still somehow want him to care about me and my husband and son(s). I know this is as faint a hope as smoke in a hurricane but the regret kicks in again. Not only that, but the care and the respect of a man as indifferent as him means nothing to me on another level. Yet somehow I can't quite cut off that hope.
Because it's really important to me to go to his funeral when he dies. I may not even be told, but if the door's totally shut then I certainly won't. Did not go to my adoptive mother's funeral, it was a different time then and the importance of going to funerals for children as well as adults wasn't as acknowledged. I regret that very deeply now and it complicated my grief for her. It's important to say goodbye, and I want to say goodbye to him. Partly for the sake of what I've written below, partly to simply close the door on a man who was intensely influential in my life, quite good at first, for the worse later on.
Because for the first ten years of my life he was quite a loving Daddy, never as involved as my mother but still he put a lot of time in telling me stories etc. I owe him for that, owe myself a goodbye to him for the good times before the bad came.
Funny, writing it down seems to highlight how important the saying goodbye after death to him is, and it seems more difficult than I can manage to write a letter saying 'you are dead to me from now on'.
Because he's the only one alive who remembers me from my childhood. Not that it's ever mentioned, but it's a bit lonely when you are the only one who remembers being tiny; a close mother or father, or even half-close does actually remember your childhood.
Thank you. I don't talk much at all about it / him to my husband or son, somehow I can't, even though my son has started asking about my childhood. Odd how much easier it is to write it down here. Thanks for listening.