Grief of my father
I some how came back to the middle of March’s blog of this year. I was reading through my awful depression and didn’t realize how bad things were while my father was dying. I have no idea how I managed through the pain of losing him and the physical pain of my ankle.
I didn’t want to read through the blogs I posted in April because that is when my father died. He had a quick decline. The nursing home gave us 20 days of full insurance and he died about 14 days or so before those days were up. I never finished writing the story I started when I was in the hospital, trying to process that day as it was so vivid in my memory banks for weeks after his death. It still is vivid but not as intrusive as it was.
My depression kind of protected me from my grief. Most days, I didn’t feel anything. I haven’t read the blogs following my father’s funeral, only the few blogs that had to deal with the stupid oxygen company that wouldn’t come to take its tank away. That was the last day I saw my father’s small apartment.
I still haven’t cried for his death. I was deeply sad reading about his death but I still haven’t cried. I don’t know if I ever will. He was a difficult man. I hated him but had to respect him. He annoyed the piss out of me, most of the time. He knew how to push my buttons to get a reaction out of me just to make himself laugh. How can I cry knowing that I don’t have to deal with that bullshit anymore? It’s a relief that he is gone, a sad relief. I never thought that I would miss the bastard. But I do.
I never told him my feelings. It was forbidden to talk about them, good or bad. He wasn’t the type to accept honest feelings. I remember when I was little, a friend of mine moved away and I was so sad that I cried. He saw me crying and laughed at me. Basically he told me to stop or he would give me something to cry about. I stopped crying because I knew what that meant. We never showed emotion in my house growing up. It was always a slippery slope.
He said that he loved me from time to time. I never believed him because the man was a pathological liar. I actually stopped believing in him when he told me to jump off the bridge when he found out I was suicidal at the age of 15. He basically gave me permission to end my life. I have been struggling with that the last 25 years or so.
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