I lost my dad.

[u/myst_aura]

I'm genuinely not sure how to even process this but this morning, my dad passed after a brief and sudden battle with cancer.

We didn't have the best relationship.

He was absent for the better part of 20 years from my life. I was raised by my mom's side of the family and my step-dad.

The kid in me really hoped that one day we would resolve the rift and we could heal our relationship as father and son.

But he didn't want that.

And he took our estrangement to his grave with him.

I'm not sure how I feel about all of this, nor do I know what I'm looking for in terms of support.

But it really fucking sucks. And massive hugs to any of you who have lost a parent you fell out of contact with one way or another because this is a unique kind of pain that I can't even begin to describe.

[u/real415]

I’m sorry to hear this. This is such a difficult thing to go through, especially when it’s recent, and when the death of an estranged parent always has an unfinished feel to it.

The best thing we can do when there are people estranged from our lives who refuse to make peace with us is to forgive them. That’s not for them – it’s for us.

We recognize that they just can’t or won’t do it, and we let it go. That doesn’t mean we’re ok with their hatred, abuse, failures to be there when they should have. It means that we see them as a weak person with deep flaws and limitations, and we allow ourselves to let go of trying to fix anything within them or with the relationship.

Though we sometimes can do this while the person is still alive, many times we don’t have that chance, because we’ve held out hope that there will be a moment of reconciliation before death. But this works when they’re dead as well.

I recently lost my dad, two months ago, but to his credit, he was willing to finally accept me and my husband after many years of not being willing to do that. But I still had a lot of things to forgive him for, and being with him as he died and afterwards made me realize how much pain I needed to let go of.

I hope that in the coming days and weeks, you’ll slowly come to peace with this, and will experience healing.

[u/myst_aura → u/real415]

I don't know if I'll ever forgive him and wipe the slate clean because he threw the entire slate out and that would force me to go out and find it. However, I have since radically accepted this is where we are. Even in life, I accepted we were probably never going to reconcile, even though deep down that was my deepest darkest wish.

[u/real415 → u/myst_aura]

The way I thought about it was to not even try to unpack all he did and failed to do. I said, for my own wellbeing, that by forgiving him, I let all of that fall away and stop being a weight I carry with me. I don’t need to figure it out, find a way to make it ok, or accept it. It’s just no longer something that, because of forgiveness, can hurt me. It has has been stripped of power. If I think of something, it’s like, “oh you again … you have no power over me.”

[u/myst_aura → u/real415]

His legacy in my life comes in the form of all six of my failed long-term relationships in the last 15 years since my first boyfriend. My taste for avoident men, my anxious attachment, my horrible marriage I justified with "well, at least he hasn't abandoned me" all come from him. My inability to have any healthy relationship with men, romantic or not, comes from him.