I had a “complicated” relationship with my father. Alone by his bedside in the hospital while he lay dying, I started to think about how sad it was… and teared up. With a low growl, my father said, “Mahers don’t weep”.
I leaned over - kissed him on the forehead and left him - to die alone - which he did a few hours later.
I drove the 2 hours from Waterbury to Boston dry-eyed.
I kept thinking at some point, I’d break down and feel the loss. Throughout the wake, funeral, disposition of the family home, holidays, etc… Nada.
It’s been 30 years
Not yet…
How do you mourn something that was never really there?
Me too. I had mourned the loss of my mother decades before she actually died. Despite her monstrosity, we gave her a beautiful death. What messed me up afterwards was the unfairness of it all. It took time to adjust to the absence of my nemesis and eventually, a year later, I was able to breathe and feel free.
My father (who was always emotionally absent) physically left us (me, 2 sisters and our mother) when I was a young girl, so when he died decades later I was engulfed in the same numbness I felt when he left us as kids. It seemed I could only experience the pain by dating commitment-phobic emotionally absent men and then it really came out in so much grief and self destruction. Today, I feel the same numbness in terms of my grief over the loss of the USA, its high ideals going down the drain. I’ve never really believed the USA would live up to its famous promises of equality and concern for the common man (except for maybe brief Democratic with a capital D periods) so this huge loss due to the GOP broligarchy takeover is tempered by the cynicism I’ve felt about the USA all along.
Not having a close relationship with my dad because of his narcissistic personality, I came to terms early on in my life that something was really wrong with him. Every time something happened, I grieved until there was nothing left but emptiness. I went to see him one last time two years before he passed away. It didn't really even bother me as I guess, I really went to say goodbye. His behavior was a result of many generations of trauma. His character was passed down but it stopped with me.
I hadn’t seen my youngest sister (Agnes really reminded me of her; I’m the oldest of three girls) for six years, even though she lived only about ninety minutes from me. She kept herself apart from my whole family for years. She died unexpectedly of a heart arrhythmia in January 2019, and mostly I was angry that she had caused such unresolved heartache to my parents and, to a lesser degree, to my other sister and me.
Three weeks before my sister died, my sweet toy poodle died at age 16, and that death hit me way harder. I still think of my poodle more than I think of my sister. The anger I had towards my sister is gone, but I’m still sorry it ended in that unresolved way. I try to think of her as a loving being now. I’m not religious at all, but the best thing for me is to see her as a really nice spirit who didn’t mean to cause so much hurt.
While I haven’t read this, your comments struck me. I have ADHD, and suspected Autism, ptsd, ocd, depression and anxiety. I was abused in all sorts of ways—except the physical—by my ex-husband. I really really grieved that relationship, that marriage, the lost dreams, wishes for how my kids’ lives were going to be.
Then I was in a 12 year relationship, long-distance for 11, with a man I’ll just call B. He was kind, quirky, super intelligent, high EQ, thoughtful communicator, super patient. He lived across the country. We shared a love of web design, worked on a few client projects together as freelancers, both of us were writers, amateur photogs, and huge readers. We were both straightforward and honest. I had him background checked: all was as he said, no marriages, no divorces, one child, no criminal record. We spent at least one week a year physically together. One year, his car broke down at my house and we spent three weeks together! He surprised me with a visit on two different occasions. No problems!! We texted constantly. He knew my every thought, my every issue, my diagnoses, my treatment, all about my kids, everything. He proposed three months in. We had a shared Pinterest board with wedding ideas. We talked about buying a house. With my messy divorce and custody settled, he knew I couldn’t move myself and the kids across the country, my ex would have a fit and take me to court! So the plan was always for him to come here.
May 2023, I went to settlement on a house with both of our names on it and power of attorney to sign for him. After looking for many months, it was a house he had selected and loved. I just wanted him to get here so we could all be together!
The kids and I moved into the house in June 2023. My two younger kids had to switch school districts. My daughter did well, but my son was smack in the middle of HS and very nearly had a nervous breakdown. I felt awful and was so worried about him. Then B texts me one night, asking exactly how much have I unpacked? Are ALL my boxes unpacked? Did I hang stuff on the walls already? How “settled in” were we? There was room for the movers to unload all his stuff, right?? I was uncomfortable and unsettled. Why was he asking?
Over the next few weeks, he kept commenting that I shouldn’t get too cozy, that he was going to get here and have all his stuff, and I didn’t want to have to rearrange everything, did I? I consulted him on furniture placement. I asked before I did anything. I knew he was anxious about moving into a house sight unseen and to be living with someone (with three kids!!) after living alone for 15 years! I tried to soothe him and reassure him (trauma response, anyone?)
He kept giving vague answers as to when he was moving. Finally he told me October 2023, he’d be here. Then he texted me saying “I might be an asshole when I get there.” Um, what?? He had never been an asshole to me and the kids!! What was he saying? He told me he was pretty particular about his stuff and he would probably question everything I had put out. I was really afraid now. Had I made a huge freaking mistake?
Long story short: Yes I had. The first three months he was here are like a black hole in my memory. It was awful. He told me three weeks after he moved in he had decided he didn’t want to get married. Maybe ever. I was stunned and heartbroken.
He basically didn’t want any of our stuff out, complained that *the four of us* had too much stuff (he is one person and had literally twice as much as we did!). He didn’t want any evidence out that the living room, kitchen, or our bedroom had been used! Like, all my books, my crafting supplies, I couldn’t leave anything out that I was working on to return to later. All surfaces had to be cleared of objects. The unreasonable list goes on. He treated my kids harshly and horribly.
By January of 2024, I was starting to think about how we could get out. My anxiety was through the roof, I was depressed. He chipped away at my self esteem with snide, passive aggressive comments every single day. I talked to my therapists (I was seeing two!!) and my psychiatrist. We began building a plan on the sly to get us out. My therapist insisted we pack and move out the same day to eliminate the risk that he would do something to our stuff if we packed one day and moved the next. It was expensive as hell. The new rental is expensive as hell! It took 14 hours to pack and move us. But we got out.
When we left, he asked for a hug. He seemed stunned and cried off and on while we packed. (I told him once all the movers, my family and the constable arrived one Saturday.) When I went to the car to drive away with my kids, I sobbed. I had thought he was the one. I thought we had a healthy relationship. Good communication. I thought we were starting the rest of our lives together!
After my initial sobbing, I didn’t cry. I didn’t cry for a good two weeks. Then my sister texted me something mean about the whole situation and I sobbed again. Then I seemed fine. I was totally puzzled by my apparent lack of grief. In the end, we had lived together a year almost to the day. And I was miserable every single day, as were my kids. I don’t regret leaving. I “gray rocked” him, went no talking cold turkey. Thought I would miss the daily interactions but I really don’t. I am free and my kids are free and I feel good about that! I am proud of myself for getting out and starting over *again.* it was hard as crap, but I was so relieved to wake up alone in my own bed the morning after we moved. I think, during the course of that year, I was grieving the relationship. Every rude comment or action from him, whether chipping away at me, or hurting my kids in some way (not physically) made me see him for who he was. It killed any love I had for him. My kids were the priority. That’s it. I didn’t feel guilty leaving this time either. I think I didn’t need to grieve for this relationship as it was so so clear what our lives would be like the next twenty years.
And I read recently that ADHDers can have a complicated relationship with grief. And surely, leaving an abusive situation for a second time, knowing intellectually what to expect, maybe that reduced my grief too? I don’t know. But I completely understand not having any grief or minimal grief about a person or situation and wondering about that. 🤷🏻♀️
I think that friend losses are a really profound but often under-noticed form of grief -- both "friendship breakups" and deaths of friends -- and deaths of friends after estrangement, in that strange liminal space where you're not sure "how much" to grieve and where the pain of the past, hurtful relationship intersects with the pain of loss of the potential healed relationship.
From a legal and social perspective, there's not as much recognition of time needed to grieve a relationship outside of close family or marriage. My freshman year of college, a classmate that I had known since kindergarten died. The most difficult thing about that, I think, was that all of us from the town had dispersed to go to different colleges, so there was no coming-together as a community to grieve. In the town next to us, a student had died in the last two weeks of senior year, and while of course they were both horrible, painful events, I remember thinking that at least everyone at that high school got to be together to remember and grieve someone they mutually knew, while I was now grieving alone, at college, without anyone around who shared a context for this person or even knew he was dead.
I am 67 and many years ago, I literally lost every member of my family. Two brothers, a sister, my parents, and my 23 year-old son. They all died differently and at different times, but my reactions and responses were different for each. My mother died when I was 17. But, my entire life she had been an awful alcoholic so to be brutally truthful, there was a little bit of relief there. We’re not allowed to say that, I know. I lost my two brothers years apart in different ways, and neither of those losses really affected me as we were not particularly close, and there was a great age difference. My sister, who was two years younger than I to the day, died at the age of 29 in a fluke accident. That was a shock but still not earth shattering. Then my 23-year-old son took his life. That’s the day the world began again. Now, that’s a tough one to come back from. But, I have. Three months after my son died my father passed away at the age of 84. Again, I know I’m not supposed to say this, but I barely felt the loss because I was so wrapped up in the grief over my son. I do have two surviving sons. For the last 14 years, I’ve worked as a volunteer bereavement counselor. Mainly with parents who’ve lost children. The journey is different for each of them. It’s as different as they and their circumstances are. But, if I can give them some small hope that they will not always be in the immense pain they are in now, I’m grateful for that. We did not have people like me when I lost my son in 2004. I needed a me. So when I was far enough down my grief journey to feel that I had something to offer, I became that. I tell people that from my greatest loss I have gotten my greatest gifts. And that’s a fact.
I never had a close relationship with my grandmother. Her relationship with my mother was complicated, to say the least. My grandparents adopted my mom and uncle because my grandfather had a genetic lung disease that killed several of his siblings and finally him. This worked out in our favor because my grandmother and her mother both had severe mental health issues that led to hospitalization. When my uncle's learning disabilities were discovered, she wanted to "give him back." This and her rampant alcoholism finally led to a divorce. She was also all about appearances and dishonest and delusional of the "don't you remember you loved the ballet classes you took" when she never enrolled my mom in classes type. By the time I was old enough to deal with her, she had let herself go to such an extent that she had to have all of her teeth removed at once and couldn't remember my name anymore. When she died, I never cried, and I never felt sad. I mostly felt sorry that her life had ended up the way it did. I never want to be so unpleasant and estranged from my family that they dread seeing me.
My father died—on his birthday—at the end of 2016. The last time I’d spoken to him on the phone was 2014. I hadn’t seen him in 12 years when he died. He passed without any family members present because he’d alienated his siblings by that point, although I know his cousin visited him as he was dying.
We were estranged for many reasons. As others mentioned, I think there was some pre-grieving involved that had been going on for years. He’d been out of my life for so long that there was no gaping hole that missed him (although there is still one that misses what it would have been like to have a better father). The feeling that hit me the hardest was relief. I didn’t have to worry about answering unknown numbers. I wouldn’t find an email from him that had been filtered to trash. And it meant that my MIL stopped asking whenever she saw me if I had “spoken to [my] daddy.”
I had a “complicated” relationship with my father. Alone by his bedside in the hospital while he lay dying, I started to think about how sad it was… and teared up. With a low growl, my father said, “Mahers don’t weep”.
I leaned over - kissed him on the forehead and left him - to die alone - which he did a few hours later.
I drove the 2 hours from Waterbury to Boston dry-eyed.
I kept thinking at some point, I’d break down and feel the loss. Throughout the wake, funeral, disposition of the family home, holidays, etc… Nada.
It’s been 30 years
Not yet…
How do you mourn something that was never really there?
(Maher was my maiden name.)
Me too. I had mourned the loss of my mother decades before she actually died. Despite her monstrosity, we gave her a beautiful death. What messed me up afterwards was the unfairness of it all. It took time to adjust to the absence of my nemesis and eventually, a year later, I was able to breathe and feel free.
My father (who was always emotionally absent) physically left us (me, 2 sisters and our mother) when I was a young girl, so when he died decades later I was engulfed in the same numbness I felt when he left us as kids. It seemed I could only experience the pain by dating commitment-phobic emotionally absent men and then it really came out in so much grief and self destruction. Today, I feel the same numbness in terms of my grief over the loss of the USA, its high ideals going down the drain. I’ve never really believed the USA would live up to its famous promises of equality and concern for the common man (except for maybe brief Democratic with a capital D periods) so this huge loss due to the GOP broligarchy takeover is tempered by the cynicism I’ve felt about the USA all along.
Not having a close relationship with my dad because of his narcissistic personality, I came to terms early on in my life that something was really wrong with him. Every time something happened, I grieved until there was nothing left but emptiness. I went to see him one last time two years before he passed away. It didn't really even bother me as I guess, I really went to say goodbye. His behavior was a result of many generations of trauma. His character was passed down but it stopped with me.
I hadn’t seen my youngest sister (Agnes really reminded me of her; I’m the oldest of three girls) for six years, even though she lived only about ninety minutes from me. She kept herself apart from my whole family for years. She died unexpectedly of a heart arrhythmia in January 2019, and mostly I was angry that she had caused such unresolved heartache to my parents and, to a lesser degree, to my other sister and me.
Three weeks before my sister died, my sweet toy poodle died at age 16, and that death hit me way harder. I still think of my poodle more than I think of my sister. The anger I had towards my sister is gone, but I’m still sorry it ended in that unresolved way. I try to think of her as a loving being now. I’m not religious at all, but the best thing for me is to see her as a really nice spirit who didn’t mean to cause so much hurt.
Sorry: SUPER LONG!!
While I haven’t read this, your comments struck me. I have ADHD, and suspected Autism, ptsd, ocd, depression and anxiety. I was abused in all sorts of ways—except the physical—by my ex-husband. I really really grieved that relationship, that marriage, the lost dreams, wishes for how my kids’ lives were going to be.
Then I was in a 12 year relationship, long-distance for 11, with a man I’ll just call B. He was kind, quirky, super intelligent, high EQ, thoughtful communicator, super patient. He lived across the country. We shared a love of web design, worked on a few client projects together as freelancers, both of us were writers, amateur photogs, and huge readers. We were both straightforward and honest. I had him background checked: all was as he said, no marriages, no divorces, one child, no criminal record. We spent at least one week a year physically together. One year, his car broke down at my house and we spent three weeks together! He surprised me with a visit on two different occasions. No problems!! We texted constantly. He knew my every thought, my every issue, my diagnoses, my treatment, all about my kids, everything. He proposed three months in. We had a shared Pinterest board with wedding ideas. We talked about buying a house. With my messy divorce and custody settled, he knew I couldn’t move myself and the kids across the country, my ex would have a fit and take me to court! So the plan was always for him to come here.
May 2023, I went to settlement on a house with both of our names on it and power of attorney to sign for him. After looking for many months, it was a house he had selected and loved. I just wanted him to get here so we could all be together!
The kids and I moved into the house in June 2023. My two younger kids had to switch school districts. My daughter did well, but my son was smack in the middle of HS and very nearly had a nervous breakdown. I felt awful and was so worried about him. Then B texts me one night, asking exactly how much have I unpacked? Are ALL my boxes unpacked? Did I hang stuff on the walls already? How “settled in” were we? There was room for the movers to unload all his stuff, right?? I was uncomfortable and unsettled. Why was he asking?
Over the next few weeks, he kept commenting that I shouldn’t get too cozy, that he was going to get here and have all his stuff, and I didn’t want to have to rearrange everything, did I? I consulted him on furniture placement. I asked before I did anything. I knew he was anxious about moving into a house sight unseen and to be living with someone (with three kids!!) after living alone for 15 years! I tried to soothe him and reassure him (trauma response, anyone?)
He kept giving vague answers as to when he was moving. Finally he told me October 2023, he’d be here. Then he texted me saying “I might be an asshole when I get there.” Um, what?? He had never been an asshole to me and the kids!! What was he saying? He told me he was pretty particular about his stuff and he would probably question everything I had put out. I was really afraid now. Had I made a huge freaking mistake?
Long story short: Yes I had. The first three months he was here are like a black hole in my memory. It was awful. He told me three weeks after he moved in he had decided he didn’t want to get married. Maybe ever. I was stunned and heartbroken.
He basically didn’t want any of our stuff out, complained that *the four of us* had too much stuff (he is one person and had literally twice as much as we did!). He didn’t want any evidence out that the living room, kitchen, or our bedroom had been used! Like, all my books, my crafting supplies, I couldn’t leave anything out that I was working on to return to later. All surfaces had to be cleared of objects. The unreasonable list goes on. He treated my kids harshly and horribly.
By January of 2024, I was starting to think about how we could get out. My anxiety was through the roof, I was depressed. He chipped away at my self esteem with snide, passive aggressive comments every single day. I talked to my therapists (I was seeing two!!) and my psychiatrist. We began building a plan on the sly to get us out. My therapist insisted we pack and move out the same day to eliminate the risk that he would do something to our stuff if we packed one day and moved the next. It was expensive as hell. The new rental is expensive as hell! It took 14 hours to pack and move us. But we got out.
When we left, he asked for a hug. He seemed stunned and cried off and on while we packed. (I told him once all the movers, my family and the constable arrived one Saturday.) When I went to the car to drive away with my kids, I sobbed. I had thought he was the one. I thought we had a healthy relationship. Good communication. I thought we were starting the rest of our lives together!
After my initial sobbing, I didn’t cry. I didn’t cry for a good two weeks. Then my sister texted me something mean about the whole situation and I sobbed again. Then I seemed fine. I was totally puzzled by my apparent lack of grief. In the end, we had lived together a year almost to the day. And I was miserable every single day, as were my kids. I don’t regret leaving. I “gray rocked” him, went no talking cold turkey. Thought I would miss the daily interactions but I really don’t. I am free and my kids are free and I feel good about that! I am proud of myself for getting out and starting over *again.* it was hard as crap, but I was so relieved to wake up alone in my own bed the morning after we moved. I think, during the course of that year, I was grieving the relationship. Every rude comment or action from him, whether chipping away at me, or hurting my kids in some way (not physically) made me see him for who he was. It killed any love I had for him. My kids were the priority. That’s it. I didn’t feel guilty leaving this time either. I think I didn’t need to grieve for this relationship as it was so so clear what our lives would be like the next twenty years.
And I read recently that ADHDers can have a complicated relationship with grief. And surely, leaving an abusive situation for a second time, knowing intellectually what to expect, maybe that reduced my grief too? I don’t know. But I completely understand not having any grief or minimal grief about a person or situation and wondering about that. 🤷🏻♀️
I think that friend losses are a really profound but often under-noticed form of grief -- both "friendship breakups" and deaths of friends -- and deaths of friends after estrangement, in that strange liminal space where you're not sure "how much" to grieve and where the pain of the past, hurtful relationship intersects with the pain of loss of the potential healed relationship.
From a legal and social perspective, there's not as much recognition of time needed to grieve a relationship outside of close family or marriage. My freshman year of college, a classmate that I had known since kindergarten died. The most difficult thing about that, I think, was that all of us from the town had dispersed to go to different colleges, so there was no coming-together as a community to grieve. In the town next to us, a student had died in the last two weeks of senior year, and while of course they were both horrible, painful events, I remember thinking that at least everyone at that high school got to be together to remember and grieve someone they mutually knew, while I was now grieving alone, at college, without anyone around who shared a context for this person or even knew he was dead.
I am 67 and many years ago, I literally lost every member of my family. Two brothers, a sister, my parents, and my 23 year-old son. They all died differently and at different times, but my reactions and responses were different for each. My mother died when I was 17. But, my entire life she had been an awful alcoholic so to be brutally truthful, there was a little bit of relief there. We’re not allowed to say that, I know. I lost my two brothers years apart in different ways, and neither of those losses really affected me as we were not particularly close, and there was a great age difference. My sister, who was two years younger than I to the day, died at the age of 29 in a fluke accident. That was a shock but still not earth shattering. Then my 23-year-old son took his life. That’s the day the world began again. Now, that’s a tough one to come back from. But, I have. Three months after my son died my father passed away at the age of 84. Again, I know I’m not supposed to say this, but I barely felt the loss because I was so wrapped up in the grief over my son. I do have two surviving sons. For the last 14 years, I’ve worked as a volunteer bereavement counselor. Mainly with parents who’ve lost children. The journey is different for each of them. It’s as different as they and their circumstances are. But, if I can give them some small hope that they will not always be in the immense pain they are in now, I’m grateful for that. We did not have people like me when I lost my son in 2004. I needed a me. So when I was far enough down my grief journey to feel that I had something to offer, I became that. I tell people that from my greatest loss I have gotten my greatest gifts. And that’s a fact.
I never had a close relationship with my grandmother. Her relationship with my mother was complicated, to say the least. My grandparents adopted my mom and uncle because my grandfather had a genetic lung disease that killed several of his siblings and finally him. This worked out in our favor because my grandmother and her mother both had severe mental health issues that led to hospitalization. When my uncle's learning disabilities were discovered, she wanted to "give him back." This and her rampant alcoholism finally led to a divorce. She was also all about appearances and dishonest and delusional of the "don't you remember you loved the ballet classes you took" when she never enrolled my mom in classes type. By the time I was old enough to deal with her, she had let herself go to such an extent that she had to have all of her teeth removed at once and couldn't remember my name anymore. When she died, I never cried, and I never felt sad. I mostly felt sorry that her life had ended up the way it did. I never want to be so unpleasant and estranged from my family that they dread seeing me.
My father died—on his birthday—at the end of 2016. The last time I’d spoken to him on the phone was 2014. I hadn’t seen him in 12 years when he died. He passed without any family members present because he’d alienated his siblings by that point, although I know his cousin visited him as he was dying.
We were estranged for many reasons. As others mentioned, I think there was some pre-grieving involved that had been going on for years. He’d been out of my life for so long that there was no gaping hole that missed him (although there is still one that misses what it would have been like to have a better father). The feeling that hit me the hardest was relief. I didn’t have to worry about answering unknown numbers. I wouldn’t find an email from him that had been filtered to trash. And it meant that my MIL stopped asking whenever she saw me if I had “spoken to [my] daddy.”
Yes, yes I have. Will try later on to discuss. I appreciate your post.