Dying dad (nc)

[SaucyMare]

After many years my dad has reduced from someone i hate/ love to someone i don't really like.

Well he has just been diagnosed with something fatal, so he's dying.

Now i don't honestly think i care, but in others experience will i regret it if i don't visit, say goodbye or something?

I'm nc with my mum and I wonder about this. If she's dying will I want to / will there be any point to visiting?

Do you think you'd get any closure from visiting? Do you actually want to see her? Could you visit with other people in preference to going alone?

I had a similar relationship with my dad - no hatred, just mild antipathy - and didn't visit for 3 years, although I spoke to him very occasionally and knew he was slowly dying of alcohol-related liver disease. Finally saw him in the last 10 days of his life when he was a yellow skinned skeleton full of tubes, and visited him every day while he was dying in hospital. By that point he was mainly comatose and demonstrated minimal awareness that I was there so this didn't provide any sort of closure.

Once he had died I found that his will, as well as cutting me out in favour of a couple of charities (fair enough), also contained a very nasty personal letter that the bastard solicitor read out to me over the phone just after the hospital had called to say he was dead, most of which was untrue and clearly written in a somewhat dysfunctional mental state. Wasn't nice.

Do I regret not seeing him when he was still properly alive? Absolutely, and not just because I'd be mortgage-free now if he hadn't cut me out. It was that letter that did it - even though I know it was partly fuelled by the mental problems that advanced liver disease can cause (and he had MH problems as well), it still gets to me now. It would have been so easy not to get into that state with him, if I'd only bothered to pop down and see him once or twice and put some things to rest rather than just pretend they never happened.

My sis is in this situation.Mum has stage 4cancer that is in remission but cant be cured.Dad is on 2nd line chemo for spreading cancer that is incurable and we dont know how long he has or even if the treatment will work.She keeps asking me to update her and did call a few weeks ago.I have a feeling if she doesnt see him and leaves it too late she will regret it.
Weall live in the same town.
She puts on a brave front but was v close to Dad growing up.I wouldnt leave it too late,you cant go back in time.All their petty rows could be put aside IMO.

Only you can answe that.

My DM went no contact with her mum when she fell pregnant with me. This was to protect me as she was abusive to my mum as a child.

Mum found out her mum was dying and in the end decided to visit.

She saw her a few times before she died. Her mum was able to hold conversations and mum saw her then as just a frail human being. Even so she didn't regret the decision she made to be NC until then.

Mum got her closure.

I don't know how mum would have been if her mum had continued to be abussive though. That's what she went half expecting the monster to still be there, that way she could only be presently surprised (not the right term but brain's in mushy mode atm)

I have been nc with my mother for most of my adult life, to me she was reduced from someone I hated to someone I really didn't like. She died a couple of years ago and I chose not to visit her before she died. No regrets whatsoever, all I felt was relief that the pressure (to visit) was gone and that I never would have to deal with her again. And then sadness that I never had a positive experience of a child-parent relationship.

If I were you I'd take time to talk to people who know you really well, people who don't judge or confuse their experience of child-parent relationship with yours. Take time to think through and feel through the various options (meeting vs not meeting) before you decide what to do. You can never be sure you've made the right decision but you can make sure that you took time to think through the options and made the decision that seemed the best at the time. Don't ignore your gut feeling and try to stay true to yourself.

Do whatever feels right for you. You're the only person that matters. Yours is the only opinion that counts. Be realistic, of course. Real life is rarely like Hollywood which probably lets out death bed reconciliations or emotional apologies for past wrongs. Do what will ultimately make you feel good.

I went NC with my dad 7 years ago and did my grieving then. I don't live with the idea that we will be in contact again, and I don't believe if we did have any contact that he would be a changed man.

Only you know what would be right for you. If you think that there is a chance that he will use his deathbed to cause more pain for you, don't go. If you hope for a last minute reconciliation and think he is capable, you should.
Sounds like you don't hate him any more - so why not think about it?

Thanks temp name.

I am not expecting a reconcilliation, as there is nothing to reconcile, I will not forgive him till the day i die.

Doom sayers have always been, "you will miss him/. Feel guilty when he dies if you stop talking to him" so was just wondering if they were true

Doom sayers have always been, "you will miss him/. Feel guilty when he dies if you stop talking to him" so was just wondering if they were true

I had the doom sayers too, for years and years and years, and I was prepared to be hit by this massive wave of guilt after my mother died (because I didn't take contact or visited her), but it didn't happen and was part of the reason why I was so relieved. I think doom sayers often think about their own child-parent relationship and how they themselves would feel and cannot understand that it can be very very different for people with negative experiences.

I didn't visit my father when he was dying and I didn't go to the funeral.
I didn't hate hi I just didn't want him in my life and I saw no need to change that due to him dying

Sorry, forgot to add no regrets at all

A friend's dad recently died. They had had minimal contact for decades but had seen more of each other after his terminal dx. In the end he deteriorated rapidly, and she sat with him for the last few hours of his life.

She says she has mixed feelings about his death, but is glad she was there at the end.

Her hurt was less raw than yours, mind, and she is still struggling a bit. But that's what she did.

I'm nc with my mother. I won't see her ever again; deathbed or no deathbed.

She wrote a similar letter to me amd my brother when she went in to have a mastectomy in case she died; all hatred and vitriol, detailing mine and my brother's many failings, and how she'd rewritten her Will in favour of the cleaner's sister, a couple of friends and the deadbeat bf she'd recently shacked up with.

More than that, she emailed it to us in case she didn't die! (She didn't)
Was another few yrs before we finally went nc.

I won't regret it.

Doom sayers have always been, "you will miss him/. Feel guilty when he dies if you stop talking to him"

That's all very well Saucy but they're not in your position and it's not for them to tell you what to do or how to feel

I can only share my own experience in that after a hideously abusive childhood, I had minimal contact with my own father. He died last week, four days after a massive heart attack, and even when I visited him in hospital I couldn't bear to stay more than a few minutes; touching him was unthinkable. I did wonder how I'd feel seeing him dead, but there was absolutely nothing , except perhaps relief that he'll never be able to hurt me again

As others have said, do exactly what feels right for you - there really is no other way

Badgers, wishing you'd sucked up because then he might have left you money is a bit... well, indicative that your relationship was not exactly ideal. Besides, if you'd visited him every day, brought him grapes and wiped his bottom, it's perfectly possible that he still wouldn't have left you a bean and that he would still have written that letter. And then you'd have wasted all that time being nice to a miserable ungrateful sod.

Dad and I didn't talk for the last year of his life. He walked out on mum on Mothering Sunday a week before her birthday, lied through his teeth but we found out he had been having an affair for years. Put mum through hell with finances crippling her after he had made we stay home from work. I visited when I was told by my godfather I was running out of time. It was bloody painful to do, but I am glad I went. It gave me closure to move on. When I heard he had died a week later I didn't cry, I had done all that, and the visit made me able to move on.

Hmmm, are you sure he is terminal? My NPD mother frequently claims to have cancer but it has so far been a pile of her usual lies.

She is currently claiming to be seriously ill again and is in her seventies. I have absolutely no intention whatsoever of visiting her and I know I won't feel remotely guilty or even sad when she does die.

I think for people who have had "normal" parents they have had the odd argument with it must seem incredible that people like me feel this way.

My mother is a monster who has abused me since the age of five. As a PP explained, I will feel nothing but relief that she will never be able to harm me again. NC is my way of keeping myself safe and terminal illness doesn't change that.

Yes, my narc father frequently claimed to be dying to get his own way - made me less inclined to visit when he actually was.

I'm nc with my father and it's too late to reconcile. He did what he did and I have granted myself an adult life where I don't have to deal with his shit.
I think he's still alive because my bitch sister will hunt me down when he dies. I imagine I'm no longer in his will. I would be quite pleased if I got some money but I don't feel entitled to a penny and I'm
Fine with that

Annie, you clearly didn't read my post. I did say that I thought that it was fair enough that he'd left all his money to charity (I'm not exactly hard up) and that that wasn't the main reason I regretted not seeing him. He changed his will about 6 weeks before he died, stating in the letter that he had done so because I hadn't seen him for the past 3 years, but also saying a lot of very nasty things in that letter that weren't true.

The fact that he was an alcoholic and serial womaniser who had got my mother's best friend pregnant while my mother was seriously ill, and made sexual advances towards me (which was largely why I stopped seeing him) was probably the main reason why my relationship with him was less than ideal. He was still one third of the only family I have, we had been close previously despite his failings, and to be reviled in those terms when he could just as well have made efforts to see me if he had wanted to was exceptionally painful, and indeed still is. Yes, we're probably both to blame for not seeing one another - we never really fell out, just drifted apart - but I'm the one who's still alive to regret it.

Doom sayers have always been, "you will miss him/. Feel guilty when he dies if you stop talking to him" so was just wondering if they were true

Well then, they aren't you and they might be talking shit.

Some people regret it. Some people don't. It's far too easy and sodding naive to blanket say "you will miss him and regret it".

A few questions that you could ask yourself. You had a love/hate relationship, now reduced to dislike.

Is there any chance of him saying Sorry? Would you be open to him saying that? If so, then it might be worth going. If there isn't a chance of him saying Sorry, could you handle that?

If it's any help I had to make a difficult decision whether or not to invite both sets of parents to my wedding. Not the same as a death but still a decision that cannot be unmade and not be one that is ever forgotten.

Might the same trick that I used help you? Imagine yourself in ten years' time. Try to think how you would feel if you do visit him, or if you don't. If you would regret not seeing him - go. If you don't care or would rather not then don't.

I would say that -most- people find it's worth going to the funeral. It's a rite of saying Goodbye mentally and closing the door for yourself. Depending on the relationship it's also a way of saying "At Last".

Lots to think about, thanks.

saucy mare .personally i have no contact with my father .he has never seen my 3 son,s the eldest 24 .and honestly if he died tommorow .well i think he is still living .i would,nt grieve .i don,t know him .but if you had some kind of relationship with with yours no matter how bad maybe you should say goodbye .only you will know .