I’m bookmarking this. I’ve realized that I somehow have wound up with A DOZEN CHILDREN and so can’t think beyond food for the next four days. I loved your post though - thank you for writing it.
And you, too, @SkyzykS.
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4th bout of cancer. Seems so cliche but I sat next to her and watched her gasp for air then die. It was coming and we all knew but to be quite honest having experienced so much death, mayhem and violence as a cop I held it together really well. I called 911 and asked for a paramedic to pronounce then went to Smoothie King. I know my family that was there resents me for not showing much emotion.
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Thats really tough. You can know its coming and brace for impact, but there’s not much anybody can do when the time comes.
You did your best in a very trying moment. Others expectations aren’t necessarily part of the equation. They might think they are, but thats just vanity poking its head out at a really bad time.
It sounds like you were in the mode of doing. Somebody has to do stuff like that. Calls, official documents, notifying absent family, etc.
We know how people end up with children!!! 
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Have fun. Engage in rambunctious merriment.
When I’ve mourned in advance, I wasn’t driven to tears or as much expression for deaths. Like with my dad, he was so unhealthy for years that I knew he wouldn’t be so old when he passed away. Coincidentally I was in a car with two T-Nation buddies when I was informed.
Blowjobs and tacos
I wasn’t sure where to put this, but it seems fitting to say here.
I really dislike having to be the adult in the relationship I have with my parents. Makes me bitter - shouldering the burden I shouldn’t have to carry.
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Grief presents so differently in everyone. You can never be sure what is happening behind the scenes. Plus @SkyzykS is right. Someone has to be the person who does all the things.
I know what you mean on this. I don’t mind with my mother. She has Alzheimer’s and has no choice. My dad on the other hand. We have a shit relationship to begin with and then he behaves like a petulant child. I too suffer a significant amount of bitterness over it. Trying not to. I know he won’t be here forever, but man he makes it hard sometimes.
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I’m sorry for what you’re dealing with.
I’m coming close to month 6 of no contact because I set a boundary of not manipulating and lying to myself or my family.
I didn’t cut off contact. They just chose to stop talking to us.
I guess this is because they don’t know how to communicate with us without doing those things.
The saddest part is that I wanted nothing more than to look up to my dad. and I can’t.
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I’m sorry. Parents and the relationships that we have with them kind of blow my mind. I think one of the hardest things for me was when I realized that my dad wasn’t really a person worth looking up to. I have struggled for years with whether I should maintain contact with him or not. The way he treats me and the way he speaks to me makes it difficult. My mom is what keeps me involved. I don’t know what will happen when she is gone. I try really hard to be a good parent so my children won’t feel this way about me later in life. My husband is the same. If we are lucky, you and I will have learned from our parents and done better by our children.
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Gaslighting is my wifes family’s entire communication pattern.
They’re accustomed to lying and backing eachothers plays to stay safe from their tyranical drunken father.
A lot of families are like that. Different impetus for the action, but same result. They all play ring around the rosy with honesty.
Just look him straight in the eyes. Not below him or above. You’re a man in your own right and accomplishment.
If he’s one too, you’ll see eye to eye. If he isn’t, there will be friction to salvage his dignity.
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He already showed me he isn’t, unfortunately.
I became who I am in spite of my parents, not because of them. A realization I wish wasn’t true.
Their months-long determination to cease contact has showed me this is the only way. These fools will die without getting to know their grandchild for the amazing person she’s turning into.
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Me too man. My dad gave up on me very early on. Never did see me for who I was or what I could become.
After I stopped him from cracking my skull with a cast iron skillet by blasting him one and knocking him across the room, he was convinced that the only path for me was to end up on death row.
Life is long.
I had a falling out with my wifes dad after he got hammered and decided to tell me what he really thought.
He aired it out. I asked him “are you done?” He smugly responded that he was.
So I told my wife to grab her coat and get in the car. And off we went. For about 4 years. Once we had our son they wanted to play grand parents.
Thats when I told them that they can, but if they can’t respect me and my family then they need not waste my time or theirs. I’ve lived a long time without them, and I’m absolutely certain I can do it again.
Thusfar, they’ve held up their end.
Point being- Life is long. Things change. If they want back in, come correctly or don’t come at all.
They are the ones that will suffer the loss. Not me.
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Did any of those interactions leave you bitter? Not just to them, but kind of feeling like the colors in life had just dulled a bit?
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No. I’ve known that I was on my own for a long time. Like since I was about 13 and became cognizant of how other peoples fathers/parents were with them vs. mine. My mom was already dead, my older brothers were leaving for the Navy, and my dads world revolved around the bar he hung out at.
I was paying him rent to live in the same house with money I made selling drugs.
The inlaws- I can take them or leave them. I have empathy for the mother, cuz she’s a broken battered woman. The father though- I’d bury him in a hole under an outhouse. He’s a child and woman beating coward that ruined the lives of the people who needed him most.
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I thought id already had that realization years ago, but maybe I just didn’t realize how far it went.
I can sympathize. My MIL passed about 6 months ago and I was pretty meh towards it… was mostly concerned for my wife and daughter. MIL and I had a challenging history.
It goes to the bone.
Expectations are resentments in the making.
Reduce them as much as possible to avoid disappointment.
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I don’t think my dad ever hit my mom, but he treated her terribly. I remember her telling me how happy she was that my husband made me his priority because she never had someone do that for her. Broke my heart. You could see the effect it had later in life. She would remind you of a beaten dog with how timid she became. Pisses me off when I think to hard on it. Probably why I’m a bit of a feminist. I watched him slowly put out her inner light because of his own insecurities and because he could.
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Side note: @SkyzykS I’m gonna meet you on one of my trips East. We will have a therapy hug session and work through some trauma together.
@Andrewgen_Receptors you can come too if you like. 
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Very similar to my dad. When I say she ran for her life I’m not kidding. My first memory of anything in this world is a pov of her holding me in her arms as he punched her teeth out. Then being on the floor while he beat her with a chair. I have very few memories of her at all, really.
Doing the math, I guess it was about 12 years into their marriage when I was 5 that she got up in the middle of the evening, us all watching TV, and went into the bedroom and shot herself in the head- through the roof of her mouth and straight out the top. Amazingly, she lived. After a stay in the hospital and a psych ward, she came home. Shortly after she left for work one day and just didnt come home.
Its a whole otther level of cruelty to do that to a person you’re supposed to love. To hurt them at such a deep existential level.
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