those of us with estranged parents, do you ever worry about what w ill happen when they die?

[filthymindedvixen]

I know this sounds warped, but I find myself worrying about how I will feel when my father dies. We haven't had any contact for around 4 years, during which time he has moved so I don't actually know where he is. I could find out if I was bothered I suppose. He has never met ds2 (who is now 6.5) and only met ds1 a couple of times. he is just not interested in us.
I've stopped grieiving for him and have explained to ds1 who asks questions that we don't need him as my step-dad is my 'chosen' as opposed to a birth dad and we love him and he is the best grand-father a boy could hope for. I have forced myself to disconnect emotionally from him now for my own mental health and well-being after years and years of emotional abuse.
But I know the issues will all emerge when he dies. His sister will tell me when it happens (though not his wife). I just don't know how I will feel. What if I feel toomuch? What if I feel nothing?

I should start saving up for some therapy shouldn't I for when this happens?

fmv ((((hug)))) this is so hard isn't it? I was talking about this very issue with the family therapist on Friday. I find it very very troubling and painful, I can't stand the thought of her being lonely and miserable, and yet I KNOW she is, because I did this to her. On the other hand there just is no way back that I can see - the things which drove me to the decision still apply and always will do.

There's no answer to this.

my family have cut me off because i dont believe in islam, my partner is jamaican, i have kids outside of marriage. they think i bring shame to the family. my youngest brother who is now 6 doesnt even remeber who i am. i havent spoken to my dad in 4 years, and my mum isnt allowed to see or talk to me. my sister and i were starting to talk again but she just kept trying to get me to convert my partner to islam, she wouldnt accept the fact that i dont want to be a muslim.

its really hard knowing that one day my parents will pass away(or i) without resoving things. but ive moved on with my life and need to concerntrate on my relationship and my children. i dont want my children growing up feeling that if they decide to do things differently they will be disowned, at the end of the day its their loss.

I wonder if it easier to reconcile if you have a clear understanding of what caused the estrangement. I am still baffled and it really changed my opinion of a father I loved before. I just can't reconcile the father I loved with one who wouldn't even pick up the phone to my sister to find out the results of my biopsy. How do you forgive that? Perhaps the answer is that you don;t and you either have to live with the kind of relationship they are able to have or choose to have no relationship.

Not quite sure where I am on that one yet.

yes I do. It is something I have thought about and am trying to accept that ultiamtely the answer to all my questions is, well, he's just probably a bit of a dickhead and took the easy option (of no contact) rather than having to putting in any effort to rebuilding the relationship with his children.

I think you're right to think about it fmv. I don't see my dad, and I wonder about this too. A few years ago he had a heart attack and was in hospital; someone, I suspect the manager of his sheltered housing, tracked me down through the web and emailed me. I did phone the hospital mainly because I wanted to know if he was actually dying, or just ill (I do want to know when he dies). However, I didn't want to speak to him. Like yours he has had plenty of chances to apologise and reconcile (years of sexual, emotional and mental abuse in this case) and he always just carries on in the same vein and thinks he's right - and I have no intention of ever letting him near my DS.

Well, I spoke to a nurse and said I was his daughter and she said "I'll just put you through and you can speak to him". Aaaaarrgghh! - I was going "No no, please don't, I'm just checking on him, please understand we are estranged and I can't talk to him." As a health professional I thought she would have been trained not to judge and.or would have seen it all before, but she was very off with me and seemed to disapprove. The whole thing was very unsettling and I did have a few days of sobbing and leaning on DP. So I imagine it will be a shake-up if or when I hear he has died.

Better that, though, than have him in my life. I have had a lot of therapy which has helped greatly.

I havent spoken to my mum in 5 years, and dont ever plan on doing so again, she put me through some horrors (although at the hands of my stepdad, she knew what was going on and made no attempts to stop it) between the ages of 8-15 until I was finally homed elsewhere.
I really am not interested in her dying, but I do sometimes wonder about my nan, as that whole side of my family became estranged not just my mother.

FMV- I think about this ALL THE TIME. About six months ago, I 'fell out' with my father, after he said some terrible terrible things, and haven't spoken to him since. It doesn't look like things will improve anytime soon, and after talking about it a lot with the friends, I have decided that the best way to handle this is to have counselling soon as poss.

Because, the way I look at it, its about good "psychological housekeeping" if you like. I hope that if I talk through my issues with a therapist now, then when he dies, without sounding callous or cynical, I'm as prepared as I can be for how I might feel. I have to be in the best place for me and my dcs/dh so that I'm not wracked with emotions I can't handle or haven't anticipated.

Maybe I am being over clinical about it, and simplifying what is a really really complex issue, but it is one that I think about a lot, so maybe counselling might be a good thing for you too, FMV? My GP was really sympathetic and I got an appointment in six weeks with a counsellor, so perhaps you could just do the same - if only as a preventative measure? If it isn't for you or the counsellor is a complete whacko, at least you have tried it?

Its such a relief (perhaps that's the wrong word?) to see so many other people with this issue - I thought I was just the exception to the rule of happy relationships with parents?!

god there are a lot of us...

lorayn - it's so true, it's not just the parent you lose, is it?
I 'lost' my grandma (his mum) who knew he was being a bastard but couldn't bring herslef not to defend him. And as a mum, I can sort of empathise with her I suppose.

But my dad didn't tell me she was dying until it reached a point where she didn't know who I was anymore. So I lost her twice. I then felt i couldn't go to her funeral, because of him and his wife.

I had counselling about a week after her death - it was alsmot funny, I went in there, talked non-stop for an hour, wept and felt totally healed and purged! Never went back or looked back. IUntil now. I had never been able to talk to anyone about it - family members have their own issues with my Father so if I tried to talk, it turned into talking about their relationship with him, not mine. And no friends have been in a similar situation so really don't understand it.

Well, this is therapeutic...and no waiting list

Thanks to all who have 'shared' on here. I hope it isn't making any of you feel worse!

Why is that Larkin peom springing to mind . This Be The Verse....

FMV - I have a couple of "episodes" a year when I get all guilty and angry and unresolved but mostly the rest of teh time its life as normal and that just doesn't have him in it. Talking about it online doesn;t stir it up for me, it's good to be able to talk with people who understand.

That philip Larkin, he knew a thing or two

Dh is in this situation with his Mum

I worry, he doesn't. I worry as much because there's the issue of his brother who lives at home, he and Dh used to be close but a family divorce scuppered that

No idea what will happen. We send gifts, they send gifts, but thats it. She doesn't know I am pg (not very far gone but my Mum does know), she hardly knows ds3 really.

Someting i dread, as I know it will bring rough seas, though can't quite rpedict what yet

filthymindedvixen, I 'fell out' with my mother before this and we didn't speak for two years, then I went round to see my nan and she was so cold, telling me I should act like an adult etc, they all saw me as a troubled teen and I never let on that there was more to it, so I assume they still think that I just 'went off the rails', for my nan, I spoke to my mother again, but when DD was born, my mother told me how my stepdad had left her for her best friends 15yo daughter, but she was taking him back!!! She also refused to admit that he was a paedophile, I gave her the option of me and my family or him, one I'd never given her before (though he had time and again, and always been the one she 'chose'). Again she chose him and I made the choice every parent should, my children's welfare and safety. I found out later they split up and he now has a child with a 17yo, but I could never talk to her again, which in turn, means no nan either. I think sometimes therapy can be a great help, others its a hindrance, but to me, knowing that I chose my children, the one thing I hated her for not doing, was plenty

lorayn
As you said, we must all do what we believe best for our children....

thought i was the only person with this prob. Didn't speak to mum for 7 years, only spoke to her when dad died. speak now but nothing meaningful. i am glad that, on the surface, "we made up", it sounds so awful, but I'll have nothing to reproach myself for,if she goes before me

Good thread this...

I broke contact with my family due to emotional abuse. My mother desparately wants to be a part of our life (me, dh and dd). However due to her personality (never taking no for an answer, interfering, infantalizing me and dh, constant source of irritation and button pushing, acting like a small child and expecting me to act as 'her mother' as she says, constantly criticising) and add to that her refusal to acknowledge her behaviour towards me as a child was unacceptable, for some strange reason I don't want her in our life. I won't go into my sisters and fathers behaviour, theirs is just as unacceptable in similar and different ways.

So I felt guilt at first for the fact my mother was besides herself over not seeing first gc. But a year or so later I feel acceptance. As in I do not feel guilty anymore. I worry about how dd will feel not having contact and how to handle that. I am in counselling which is a lifesaver (try to get some!) but I have gone back to my original feeling towards my family...just numb. I think this sums it up, when I lived away for the first time, I took photos that made me happy and made me feel fondness/love. One of each of my pets, one picture with all the pets together, and one of my best friends. I have never had a single picture up of my parents or sister anywhere I have lived. Because it brings negative thoughts to the fore. And that's just their pictures.

I don't think your strange for wondering how it will be for you when your father dies, I think about it too now and then...I think its natural. I still have a small part of me who wonders if what I have done was done in the right way. But as for wanting them back in my life, my counsellor says I can work on my relationship with them, but quite frankly, I don't want to. They have caused too much hurt and pain to me. And I don't think they will ever, ever honestly understand how much, and just how much their behaviour in the past has a affected my present and future. I have moved on now, I'm not like them anymore, I've changed/am changing behaviours that I learnt from them, and most of all I just have no feeling for them. But I do wonder, will the floodgates open when they pass on and its 'safe' to feel once more?

Sorry about the long post. Hope it helped somewhat. But it was very theraputic for me, didn't bring back bad memories, it helped clarify points for me!

Numb is the perfect word to describe it, I went through hate,guilt, disappointment, despair and pity all sorts of feelings towards my mother, but now, there is what I can only describe as a void, its empty. I also can not understand why she did what she did and that pleases me, I do not want to be able to understand what she did, or how she acted, and some people may think thats strange, but really, who wants to understand what someone did if you disagree with it so much?

ive had a very broken relationship with my mother for the last 4 years. (my mum and dad devorced when i was bout 4. all i can say is, thank god for my dad, he's fantastic)

I havnt even spoken to her for the last year or so. She has never seen my daughter (9 months old) and hates my husband.

In my case, I had to let the relationship go with her, as she isn't a very nice person at all, is very selfish, manipulative, and I will not drag my daughter into the twisted head games she likes to play, so she is out of my life.

The way I see it, life is too short to entertain the horrible people that really affect you emotionally.

Even though sometimes i do wonder if she is ok, what she is doing etc and it does upset me, I have had to make the firm decision with myself that this really is for the best. It would be so unfair to my little girl and i never want her to go through the same head mess that I did.

I could have written wuzzlefraggle's post.

How will you feel when she dies?

This is something my own father had to go though. He had a terrible childhood and was formally disherited and disowned by his father (and later by his sister) when I was a small child. A few years ago we had a call from the hospital, letting us know that the grandfather was dying in hospital.

My father decided to visit him but he never spoke of what happened but said he felt the visit gave him some sense of closure. My sister and I didn't visit, we were too angry with what he put our father though.

The funeral was terrible, we all went to support my father. His enstranged sister was there and she didn't speak to anyone, including her own children and her ex husband...very bitter woman