This has made me unpopular a few times and the fact others seem to have decided to idealise a person who caused me a lot of pain in my life is causing me more than a little distress at the moment.
The person concerned is my father and while some of the below is very minor in the eyes of many, the collective effect is something I spent years recovering from.
While married to my mother they found she was pregnant. She knew she wasn't ready to be a mum so wanted to abort, he pressured her into keeping me. In itself not horrendous but when you have married someone and forced them into keeping a child they knew they weren't ready for it is more than a little cowardly to run away from both of these commitments. The relationship was ended due to irreconcilable differences, aka both having affairs and in truth this was likely going on before I was born on his part. Those with high ideals regarding anti-abortion, please thank your parents for a very happy life, only people with one could be so ignorant. Also consider over 95% or 'saved' abortions attempt suicide multiple times then consider how well they have really been saved.
My mother got custody, whether this is the best thing that could have happened I will never know but he got full visitation rights and I know how much effort she put in to make him an active part of my life. Active part doesn't mean saying you will be there and not turning up so many times for so many years the zero confidence child eventually responds to 'I'll see you on Friday' with 'Which Friday?' before turning and walking away. If you aren't pretty close to 100% sure you can keep the promise, don't make it. You feel far less worthless if someone says they'll be in touch about a visit than if they continuously don't turn up when they say they will.
One of the milestone moments in most children's lives is when they first learn to ride a bike without stabilisers. Something my mother could have done but felt would be good to have my dad to to give me a positive memory I could link to him. My moment of pride and joy at managing this after trying for some time was only equaled by my disappointment when I saw he considered this was job done and could then get going back to his new family.
Knowing that for years I lived literally 5 minutes away from a junction he passed on his way to and from work, yet still couldn't be bothered to come in to see me.
My mother was no bargain either and as is not uncommon in my home town at 16 years old I was kicked out of home. I couple of months later my dad turned up to visit, not to check on my well being, just to find out how long I had been living alone as my mother hadn't notified him and was still collecting maintenance payments. Visit length was minutes which considering he would have spent over an hour travelling each way to find this out, left no doubt of it's purpose.
In order to get through stuff like this you have to let it go, so when he apologised under the influence of a lot of alcohol I gave him a clean slate. I had long accepted I was a part of his life he regretted having happened and saw no point clinging to it. There are people who will say being over things means it never effecting you again, this is wrong, that is burying it, being over it is dealing with something and moving on.
I did tend to think my life was the only one he was prepared to mess up. After all his new wife was keeping to the agreement made, looking after the house, bringing up the children and letting him be the provider. I was, as I often am, wrong. His system of viewing marriage as a casual thing hadn't changed. He was happily sleeping around and would have left his second wife and family too if my sister (half sister really) hadn't insisted he stay. He did so but I would never declare he would have done so faithfully.
When I noticed he was starting to make the same promises to my son and not keep them as he had to me I started cutting him short and telling him to give us a call when he would be available to visit us again. That was the biggest mark on his cleaned slate, damaging my life was bad enough, doing so to my son would never be allowed. My son's reaction to his death has been that it won't bother him as he never knew him, in truth I have to agree and would say neither do I.
When he died I was slightly relieved. We visited him a few weeks ago, when he was still lucid which was no small feat because he is a long way from my home. The thought of going to visit him again to spend minutes in his company then go back again for a funeral was filling me with dread, hence the relief. This feeling reminded me of the many times in my youth I wished him dead and how angry and upset he'd made me so many times. When asked by the person who will speak at his funeral for things I remembered about him I realised there is not a single happy memory in my mind associated to him. The net effect is I have been struggling a lot mentally lately and realise the lessons I have learned from my father are all how not to live and treat people.
Sorry but when someone lives there life being a total a hole then dies, they don't become perfect, they just change from being a live a hole to a dead one.
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