This may run a bit long because I want to give it proper context, so TL;DR at the bottom.
As the tittle says my dad passed away last Sunday and nobody bothered or cared to tell me. A little backstory here:
My dad (80ish) had been diagnosed with cancer in both kidneys a while ago, had one taken out while the cancer in the other kidney had become encapsulated so there was no need to treat it. I was aware of that, he told me about it and I took him to the hospital and picked him up after surgery. All fine.
He seemed to be recovering well until he broke his leg, at this point he was already getting weaker so everyone thought it was because he’s old and he had a fall. He had surgery and that was it, I again picked him up from the hospital and took him to his house, I visited him sometimes and one time he mentioned in a VERY casual way they had found lung cancer, but he made it a point to literally tell me “Don’t worry, I'm getting treatment Monday I'll keep you posted. You know I used to smoke like crazy” so that was it. I would call him every once in a while to check up on him and every time he would tell me he was feeling better and sort of moving around, didn’t ask about the lung cancer treatment because I knew that if there was something wrong he'd tell me.
About a week or so ago he called me crying to tell me he was sick of being alone and nobody caring for him and of how sick he was of feeling weak and not being able to move, he told me he had another fall and had now broken his arm, he asked me to take him to the hospital but I told him I was actually, right that moment, leaving town because of work and I just couldn’t, he told me “Don’t worry then, I'll get someone else to take me or I'll call an ambulance” and that was it, never heard from him again. Until last Monday.
Monday morning I'm having breakfast with my wife, we’re chatting and joking and decide to check my phone, hadn’t done that since Saturday and I find a message from an old friend that was also pals with my dad (both being lawyers) telling me how sorry he was and that he understood what I was going through and had no words, just offering his support. Now I know that’s the sort of message you get when someone passes away, but my mom passed away 6 years ago, my wife and kid were with me and I have no other family members that would merit such a message. Then it hit me, my dad! It was sort of like that scene in Home Alone when the mom feels like she maybe forgot something and it suddenly clicks and screams “KEVIN!” That was me.
So I got a little distraught, scared and just didn’t know what the actual fuck was happening. He’s my dad, I may not actually have a relationship with any of his family but they for sure know about me and my dad had all my numbers in his phone and address book. We share the same name. So they obviously knew how to contact me. I knew two of his brothers were taking care of him daily. My dad also had this “He’s got his own family now, let’s not bother him that much” sort of attitude towards me. But him dying sure is something you'd tell me about!
So I took my kid, he’s a 17 year old teen (we had him when we were 22 and 21) and we went on a wild hunt, until I remembered where an uncle of mine worked and stopped by, he told he passed away and where the funeral service was being held. He also told me he was way worse than what my dad told me, cancer had spread all over his body, including bones and brain. It was way worse than my dad told me.
I get to the very end of my dad’s service, just about 30 minutes before they take his body to be cremated, his whole family looks at me with disdain and as if somehow I didn’t belong there. One of his brothers, the one that took care of him last, tells me he was actually really bad, how desperate he got trying to contact me in the last few days, I tell my uncle I had lost my phone and I was actually out of town. He just says “I see, well he didn’t know that” as if he was somehow blaming me for something!
Anyways, I spend what time is left there alone with my dad, as much as his family doesn’t seem to want me there I'm his son and they literally clear the room as soon as I step in. Knowing they can’t do anything.
So, now a little backstory (sorry but I think it’s necessary) about my relationship with my dad.
He was an asshole. Pure and simple. He was abusive towards my mom, hitting her a couple of times when I was quite little, he abused my mom verbally and especially psychologically. He was also verbally abusive of me. He was a womanizer and he eventually left her for another woman and had two daughters with her. My dad eventually regretted that decision after his career and personal life collapsed and returned home but I was well on my way to college and I just didn’t have it in me to create a relationship with him by then. He found me interesting when I became an adult but the memories were all to bad and all to present for me to be anything other than polite.
As the years passed I kept him at what it felt like a safe distance, when I got married he gave me good advice in what it felt like his most honest, clean and loving interaction with me. When my kid was born I hoped he would take it as a chance to build with him what he couldn’t with me, but he was also sort of distant with my son despite my efforts to bring them closer together. That obviously hurt me. He was also distant with my wife, but he was a rabid sexist and misogynistic so, didn’t surprise me. Women were always just objects to him, nothing more.
When my mom was diagnosed with cancer I dropped everything to care for her, my dad saw that and when it was him that was diagnosed he sort of let me know he hoped I would do the same for him, but I didn’t have it in me, because while my mom and I were a team growing up my dad never really was there for me. Hell, I knew he kept cheating on my mom for years and years after she took him back, hell he even went to my mom’s funeral service with a freakin date! He was there for around 40 minutes and told me “well gonna go now, I need to sleep, I'm really tired” and left!
When he started feeling sick and his cancer started acting out I tried to care for him some, but nowhere near as I did for my mom, I kept up with him by phone but always found an excuse to not go visit him, because the relationship never developed, he was a lousy father and he never even once apologized. Never. The most he did was telling me once “I was an asshole, I know, but whatever it’s been too long since then, not worth it anymore” I couldn’t believe that was all he could say about everything he did!
Now I feel guilty because maybe I should have done more for him, maybe I should have dropped everything to be by his side when he was sick? I have to add, every single interaction with him throughout my adult life was bad to awkward, he would always find ways to make passive aggressive comments to me. I was a fat kid and he would make fun of me and call me names, make fun of me when I ate, then I got fit in my late teens all he said was “about time” then when I got married he told me a couple of weeks later “you better not get fat again” As a kid I didn’t like sports as I preferred to draw all day and play with toys and watch cartoons, he would tell me “you’ll turn into a fagg*t that way” he was also extremely homophobic. He even told my kid his other grandchildren were cuter... he was a major idiot. I could go on and on but you get the idea.
Yet I can’t shake this enormous guilt and pain I feel, like somehow I left him down. That I didn’t fulfill my duties as a son. Maybe it’s because his family tried to exclude me from his death and funeral service? I don’t know. I feel horrible right now.
Thanks for reading everything down to this point, thank you so much for your time.
TL;DR My dad passed away last Sunday and nobody told me, then they tried to leave me out of his funeral service. My dad was a huge asshole even abandoning my mom and I to start a new family. My mom took him back and he kept cheating on her up until her death. He was abusive to me. We had a damaged relationship yet now I feel tremendous guilt for not being there more for him in his last days.
Submitted June 18, 2019 at 12:14PM by HyperAktiFF http://bit.ly/2XtiSgQ
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