I’m aware I may be due to grief and past history but need outside opinions. Sorry it's long but I don't want to drip feed.
Dad and I have a difficult relationship. I am an only child and now 36. I find dad to be very controlling and suffocating towards me and mum. It’s his way or the high way and if someone doesn't fall in line he will tantrum and shout you down. He bullies my mum, shouts at her and nitpicks at her all the time. She does everything at home whilst he sits there doing nothing. He is in poor health but certainly milks that to get everyone else to run around after him. Mum deals with this by keeping her head down and saying nothing for a quiet life. I used to be the same but for the last few years I have challenged him when he is bullying her or when he is dictating to me. This has resulted in us not speaking for various periods and then making up but his behaviour doesn’t change. He loves the sound of his own voice, doesn’t stop talking, mainly about himself as everything is me, me, me and we disagree on a lot of matters. We have little in common and to be honest I dread speaking or seeing him as it’s such hard work but I want to see and speak to my mum and he gets very funny about her doing things like seeing me without him.
In February this year I fell pregnant. DH and I were overjoyed and everything went perfectly with the pregnancy. Low risk, very happy time. In the summer dad and I had a big blowout over the way he was speaking to my mum and having find out we were expecting a girl I suddenly had the realisation that I didn’t want her to grow up seeing that kind of behaviour so I took a bit of a step back from seeing him. Not easy as he gets very passive aggressive if I’m not in contact with him often enough.
Devastatingly our DD was born sleeping last month at 41 weeks whilst I was in labour. We don’t know why, the PM and investigation reports are still pending. DH and I are heartbroken and trying to find our way through the grief. Initially, to my surprise dad was very supportive. I had thought that this tragedy may bring us back together.
This week we had my DDs funeral. The night before the funeral my parents stayed at a hotel near where the service was for convenience. I met them for dinner the night before. Obviously we were all feeling fragile, DH and I had been to the funeral directors that afternoon to take some things to be put in the coffin and spend some time with our DD. One of the things that my mum had asked to do was write a letter to our DD for the coffin. I also wrote one and told our families they could put photos in if they wanted.
During dinner my dad decided to start in on me about the fact that I don’t speak to my aunt, his sister. She's not a nice person, and is basically a female version of him so I have gone NC. He does not accept this and says she’s my only aunt on his side so I should speak to her. I told him I didn’t want to talk about that then. He carried on until I ended up getting upset and crying at the table. He apologised and I composed myself. My mum then asked about the letters and visit to the funeral director so I said we'd taken them and spent some time there. Dad then kicked off. Claimed he hadn’t been told about the letters and might have wanted to write one. Mum said she had told him about this and he had said he couldn’t deal with thinking about the coffin. He got quite nasty with her, said he didn’t remember that and told her she was ‘fucking lying' and said to her ‘don’t you fucking lie to me'.
This happens a lot with him being told something then claiming not to remember but really he just doesn’t listen. I told him if he wanted to write a letter he could do one for her memory box or if he wrote one that night we might be able to put it in the coffin before or after the funeral. I told him to stop having a go at mum and making it about himself. He went off on me, told me he knows I’m upset but other people are too and he is having to walk on eggshells around me. He insinuated we had deliberately kept this from him and had cooked it up when mum had come to see me on my own a couple of weeks ago. I told him to think about writing a letter to his granddaughter and not focus on making out everyone was against him. As we walked to the cars he said we’re all a bit fragile and sort of apologised. I ended up driving home in tears, seething about how once again he’d made it all about him. My mum sent me a message later that night saying she was sorry he was so badly behaved but he doesn’t know how to cope.
After the funeral mum and dad drove us home and once again he was making passive aggressive comments in the car about not being told anything and always being left out.
The more and more I think about things the more upset, hurt and angry I am at his behaviour. None of us know how to cope as none of us have been through this before, we are all going through hell but no one else would have behaved this way, except him. He made what was already such a difficult time so much worse and as usual thought only of himself. We are meant to see my parents on boxing day but I want to tell him this week that how he has behaved was incredibly hurtful and I am disgusted with him. I didn’t at the time as I wanted to focus on giving my DD the best send off possible. Now though I honestly feel he has behaved unforgivably and I don’t want to see or speak to him. But am I overreacting here or am I right to be so upset?