Father died

[Lemons]

Hi, I've been on this forum for quite a long time but created a new profile for this post just for some added privacy. I'd been thinking for a while now that if anyone IRL stumbled across my previous posts it might be obvious who I am.

So anyway, yeah, my father has died and I'm kind of reeling. We hadn't been in contact for a few years as I've had a lot of childhood trauma to work through, which felt impossible to do with the trigger still being there. I was aware that his health had really started to go downhill and I'd been considering getting back in contact in some form, so his sudden death has come as a shock. I was naive but I really thought there would probably have been more time than this. I'd been imagining how difficult it was going to be facing him again and had been reluctant to invite the old dynamics back into my life. On the one hand it's perhaps a blessing that I don't have to deal with all that now, but on the other I feel sad that he didn't die knowing that I held no ill will against him anymore. In the last couple of years I had really started to let go of a lot of anger and resentment and had come to a place of feeling empathy for him. Of course, he hadn't changed and proved time and time again that he either didn't have the capacity to do so or didn't want to, perhaps both, so it would have been a very superficial relationship with the onus on me to be the emotionally mature adult with very firm boundaries in place. I think it would have been exhausting, but still...it's hard knowing that the door is firmly closed now. I guess part of this is an element of wanting to fix it all, which would have been impossible to do on my own. It was an impossible situation in general really.

The grief I'm feeling is so complicated. I realised earlier this year when I was having a particularly tough time with my mental health that I never stopped loving my dad. I don't think he was an entirely 'bad' person, just a very, very damaged person who did cruel things to other people because he never sought any other way to cope with his own trauma. The propensity for a lack of self awareness is the worst thing about personality disorders because it means that there's never any healing for the sufferer themselves. I never distanced myself from him to punish him or to prove a point; it was purely about giving myself a chance to heal, individuate and to become a better functioning person. As a fully grown adult I was always so worried about his volatility and what I might be punished for next, such as him flying into one of his rages and turning up at my workplace to humiliate me in front of my co-workers. I didn't have any sense of self, assertiveness or any concept of healthy boundaries back then and each instance like this would trigger so much shame.

I always thought I might feel relief at his passing, but at the moment I'm just alternating between feeling numb and having waves of sadness come over me. I think it's mostly related to the loss of opportunity and the frustration that goes with it. I keep having memories come back up of all the upsetting things that he did or said over the years and it's telling that my brain is bringing these up rather than any genuinely happy memories. I can't think of any genuinely happy memories, just moments of respite where he would be in a good mood and things would be surface level pleasant, like enjoying a TV show together. This makes me so sad. I wish that there were more childhood memories there to look back fondly on.

I used to try to avoid the subject of my dad and feel awkward and shameful about the estrangement, but now if the subject of my parents comes up in casual conversation it's going to be a very simple response: neither of them are alive anymore. For the last few years I've been pretty incognito with everyone and haven't felt able to have much of an online presence using my real name, plus have been selective about how much information I give mutual people about my life in case it would get back to him and he would publicly pursue me against my wishes. It's felt empty, inauthentic and I've felt awful at times about not being able to open myself up more to people. I was just too fearful. I think there's further grief here too about the fact that no contact has limited my relationships with other people and it's always been a dark cloud hanging over everything. I've actually made great in-roads over the last year or so and have dropped a lot of the hyper vigilance that had caused me to act like this, so I'm hopeful that I can now let go of this even further and feel generally safer. I've always been aware on a cognitive level that I'm 'safe enough' as an adult, but the child part in me can perhaps now truly believe it.

Anyway, yeah, so...that's that? I've got a feeling it's not, but the only way out is through. It's been therapeutic to write this in a space where people might relate. I'm not involved in any of the practicalities of his passing, which I think would normally keep family busy at a time like this, so it's difficult to know what to do with myself at the moment. 

[Hazy111]

First of all Lemons you have my sincerest condolences, i feel the same.

Jeez, your post could have been written by me... exactly the same scenario... though my father by the sound of it  was far less explosive. I was notified after the event about his funeral as the letter arrived late due to postal problems?? Doesnt the Universe work in strange ways??  I doubt in all honesty i would have gone due to the no doubt enormous opprobrium from the rest of my PD extended family ( particular uBPD sis who was in contact with him 'til the end) and that i am NC with.

I realised quite a while back my father was a narcissist ( the cerebral kind that Sam Vaknin describes). There was something else about him that I couldnt put a finger on . I thought he was schizoid but schizoids dont stay married for 40 years. Then i started to read about and listen to people with Aspergers Syndrome and i think he was on the spectrum of sorts,  it explained his complete "narrow band with" as its called emotionally.

Ive been on forums with children with fathers with Aspergers and many have ended up  NC as it is has been difficult. Some Aspergers sufferers remain docile and then can explode in violent rage. This wasnt my father. He just didnt show any interest in me unless he could brag about my success in reflected glory or my uBPDmother "called him in" ( usually in the next room in a sea of cigarette smoke reading the paper) to reprimand us. . He was there but wasnt "there" so to speak.

Sorry to hijack the post slightly but i can appreciate your views of making contact again. But so what if you did,  it would as you say be totally one sided with me making allowances for his self obsession and complete lack of insight  or empathy. He was very intelligent and i miss those conversations about politics the Universe football  etc. ..

The guilt ebbs and flows , but guilt is the result of being raised by narcissistic parents who were emotionally unable to raise children  A child cant raise a child.  I put their needs before mine to survive and still do in my head but theyve both passed now and i am more at peace than i have ever been.

It isnt my fault and it isnt yours. You couldnt fix it thats the guilt.  As my therapist said once when again as i was making excuses for him. "We are here to help you not him. Concentrate on that."

Good luck.

[SunnyMeadow]

Hi Lemons,

I relate to what you wrote about feeling safer now. I used to limit what I wrote about my mother. She was minimally tech savvy and I was always afraid of saying too much in case she found me online. I felt the same about in person relationships too. Since she died I feel so much safer and true to myself. I finally feel like a grown up because my mother isn't going to hear me and punish me. She's not going to make up stories about me and my immediate family either.

Loss of opportunity is a good way to put it. No, you couldn't have worked on it on your own. In my case, my uNPD mother never thought she did anything wrong so it would have been impossible to work on the relationship from both sides. They are complicated which makes their passing complicated. Like Hazy wrote...it's isn't my fault and it isn't yours. It wasn't our fault. We were the children and the parents should have done better at parenting. NPD and parenting is a bad combination apparently.

Feeling numb and sadness initially is probably just about right. Maybe the relief will come later. I felt numb at first too. I can definitely relate to a lot of what you wrote. You're right, the only way out is through.

Take care   

[Lemons]

First of all Lemons you have my sincerest condolences, i feel the same.

Jeez, your post could have been written by me... exactly the same scenario... though my father by the sound of it  was far less explosive. I was notified after the event about his funeral as the letter arrived late due to postal problems?? Doesnt the Universe work in strange ways??  I doubt in all honesty i would have gone due to the no doubt enormous opprobrium from the rest of my PD extended family ( particular uBPD sis who was in contact with him 'til the end) and that i am NC with.

Thanks Hazy111. It sounds like going to the funeral might have been an ordeal for you, as I suspect it would be for me. I'm actually fortunate to have a few kind, supportive family members but I think there will be others attending whose reaction to me being there I can't predict. Being in the potential position of being confronted and given a public dressing down would be devastating for me right now. I don't think it would be very healing for me to attend and I think in all likelihood there would be a lot of trauma triggers.

It isnt my fault and it isnt yours. You couldnt fix it thats the guilt.  As my therapist said once when again as i was making excuses for him. "We are here to help you not him. Concentrate on that."

The guilt has started kicking in, but it does disperse a bit and gets replaced with anger when I remember exactly how and why we came to be in this scenario. Anger not just at him but at the fact that one or both of his parents also mistreated him, and perhaps their parents mistreated them, and their parents' parents before that... It just sucks. Why don't people lean towards kindness instead? How can it be in anyone's nature to make themselves feel better by being cruel towards others? I'll just never get it, it's so senseless.

I finally feel like a grown up because my mother isn't going to hear me and punish me. She's not going to make up stories about me and my immediate family either.

Thanks SunnyMeadow, this is really good to hear. I think you've hit the nail on the head there, you can speak your truth and say whatever you like without fear of your mother taking revenge on you for it and making life even more difficult. I've pretty much kept myself hidden for the last few years and have been wary of others because my father's weapon of choice was social humiliation. It's been so limiting and damaging for me when I reflect on it. 

Loss of opportunity is a good way to put it. No, you couldn't have worked on it on your own. In my case, my uNPD mother never thought she did anything wrong so it would have been impossible to work on the relationship from both sides. They are complicated which makes their passing complicated. Like Hazy wrote...it's isn't my fault and it isn't yours. It wasn't our fault. We were the children and the parents should have done better at parenting. NPD and parenting is a bad combination apparently.

It was so hard trying to figure out what to do towards the end. What I find really difficult to come to terms with is the fact that it looked like I was resolutely rejecting him each time he attempted contact with me (not that regularly in fairness, once or twice a year), but it was never that straightforward on my part. I always had it in mind that "one day" I would have everything a bit more sorted, perhaps put some more miles between us and be in a stronger position emotionally where I would be better placed to deal with all the stress that being in contact with him brought. I agonized over whether or not to send him a letter just asking for space, but it was so pointless because it would have been seen as an attack and used as ammunition against me. Some form of reconcilation one day was what I was trying to work towards and I never completely shut the door on him mentally; there was always that sliver of hope that we could salvage something. I know logically that it's not my fault and that it was a horrible sitaution to find myself in, but...sigh. It's so hard.