Grieving an Estranged Parent is… Weird
Grief. As humans, we will all experience grief, especially when we are left after the death of a loved one. But what about when we experience the death of someone we are no longer close to, even though we once were close?
The day after Christmas I learned that my father had died, most likely from a blood clot. An autopsy would follow. He would be cremated, as per his wishes. And in a few months, once the weather warmed again, graveside services would be held in a small East Texas town where my grandparents are buried. My father was only 65 years old. I haven’t seen or spoken to him in 15 years, since just before my husband and I married. He didn’t know that I have the most beautiful daughter in the world, that I recently earned my doctorate, or that I survived a potentially fatal car crash 6 years ago. My father-in-love, my dad, was there for all of those moments, and many, many more.
Let me back up and explain a bit more about how we ended up here…
When I was very young, I was a daddy’s girl. My daddy was weird, and definitely a huge geek, but I loved him. He took me to the library, never said no to a book I wanted, read me bedtime stories with coffee breath, and until I was nearly 10 years old, woke me up every morning and lifted me up out of my top bunk and onto the floor. He was responsible for cooking my sister and me breakfast every morning while mama got ready. He liked pork rinds and gas station hot dogs (neither of which I can stomach!) and his blood had long ago been replaced by Folgers coffee. I’m convinced he had more coffee than blood in his veins!
My daddy was a whiz with computers. What he lacked in people skills he made up for with his deep well of knowledge. I had my own computer and access to the internet in the early nineties, way before it was cool. I remember getting his help to load songs onto my little MP3 player, and all my friends thought it was so cool that I didn’t have to lug my CD’s around anymore to listen to music at their houses. Gone were the days of trying to record a song from the radio onto a cassette tape!
Around the time I hit 10 or 12 years old though, my dad began to change. He became more angry, more bitter, more withdrawn, and more selfish. Over time he stopped taking us to the library, stopped fixing our breakfast, stopped reading us bedtime stories, and his discipline became borderline abusive. He often fell into that gray area of not exactly verbally abusing us, but definitely taking the discipline far beyond necessary measures. The yelling intensified in volume and in frequency. By the time I was 16 I was angry and bitter toward him too. And then when I was 19, my mom finally had enough. He was super aggressive toward my grandparents, specifically my grandfather, and my mom told him to leave. They were divorced a few months later.
I decided it was a chance to change things between my daddy and me. It wasn’t long before I was engaged and I couldn’t wait to tell my daddy! We had been going to dinner together about once a month, but I was working a full time job, working a couple of part time and weekend jobs, and going to college full time, so I had virtually no free time and what little I had I was spending with my boyfriend, then fiance. After a few more months, Daddy wanted to introduce me to (his words) “his especially lady friend” (ewww lol). I really did want to meet her but I was working constantly, going to school, and planning my wedding. It was February. I asked him if we could postpone the introductions until after the wedding when Hubby and I would return from our honeymoon. Apparently, the girlfriend was insistent that we meet, so they showed up to the bath store where I worked at the mall. I was a manager and at the time they arrived, the only employee in the store, as the associate working with me had just gone to lunch. I was very overwhelmed, and worried I could get into trouble having guests in the store while I was on duty, and asked them to leave and let’s set up a proper date after the wedding. That was the last time I spoke to my daddy. Everything that happened after that was hearsay (gossip) from my sister about what they would say about me. It was only a few years and my sister also stopped talking to them. He married the girlfriend, took on a paternal role with her children, and bragged about all of his grandchildren. He never met his own biological granddaughter.
So back to the original topic… grieving an estranged parent is weird. And hard.
I was really struggling to explain my feelings but my mother-in-love helped me to articulate it. I’m not grieving the man he became that I don’t even know. I’m grieving the man I remembered and I’m grieving for the little girl he left behind.
I told my husband that even though I had no intentions of changing our estranged state, as long as he was alive I could have. I could have, at any moment in time, decided I wanted something different there, and made an effort to reach out to him. Now, that reconciliation is not a possibility anymore. It has become finite. I’m still processing my feelings about the whole situation but this is where I have landed:
I don’t want to harbor anger or resentment. I forgave my daddy a long long time ago. I also decided then that even though I forgave him, didn’t mean I had to let him back into my life with his new family and the negativity I felt about the whole situation. Forgiveness for me meant I didn’t harbor any ill feelings toward him or his family, but I still didn’t consider them family or want anything to do with them.
I would rather feel sadness than bitterness. I talked to my sister. She tried to seem indifferent but just came across as bitter. If I have to experience some kind of emotion in these moments, I would rather experience sadness than bitterness.
I choose to remember the daddy that I had as a very young girl and grieve him, letting go of the man he became.
My joy comes not from my circumstances but directly from Jesus. I can feel all of my feelings and at the end of the day still tell you that I’ve got joy in my heart. I don’t know for sure whether or not my dad went to heaven. There was a time he went to church with us, but did he truly accept Jesus Christ as his Savior? I’m just not sure. My joy comes not from convincing myself he is in a better place, but from knowing that one day I will be, and that my current sadness is temporary.
I Googled “grieving an estranged parent” and found a few helpful journal prompts:
What did I get from my parent that I want to keep?
A love of reading
A passion for technology
Curiosity
Are there things I regret not getting?
His side of the story about why he and my mom divorced
What did I receive that I want to discard?
Poor money management
Poor dietary habits
Manipulation
Anger / yelling
Are there needs that my parent couldn’t meet for me?
Support of my goals and dreams in life
Financial support of our infertility journey
A source of encouragement, compassion, and love
From whom and how have I met those needs?
My relationship with God
My walk with the Holy Spirit
My husband
My father-in-love
My daughter
If you are grieving a loved one, or if you’re like me and grieving the death of a parent you were no longer close to, I hope this post has encouraged you. No one can understand how you feel when you lose someone you are estranged from. Especially a parent. Please know, your feelings are valid. You aren’t silly or stupid for feeling sad. You’re allowed to feel regret, or anger, or remorse, or bitterness, or helpfulness, or thankfulness, or guilty, or lost. Just know that God is bigger than all of those feelings. He is fully equipped to carry that burden for us, if we only ask Him. Below are some Bible verses and prayers that have been helping me along this grief journey. I hope they will help you too.
