My Father is Now Dead - My Abuser is Dead
My father who was my abuser is now dead.
It happen two weeks ago.
For each of my eight siblings his death has been different.
I can respect this, but I am not sure all of my siblings can honor the different ways we have each responded.
Those who stayed in a relationship with him, even though he never actually admitted to abuse nor the gravity of the injury he causes in the lives of those he should have protected and provided for.
Throughout this blog and my other raw one shatteredglasslight, I have written about the abuse I endured and how I was learning to deal with it, heal from it and prevent the cycle of abuse of repeating in my own family. My blogs began in 2008. I have been through so much work to overcome my abusive childhood, and in the healing process I was obedient everyday to what God was asking me to do in order to heal.
Yet, that took me on a journey that meant I had to break off my relationship with my father. I didn’t only have to do it. After trying to make it work for over 40 years and continually being exposed to abuse and re-traumatized I wanted it to be over. The only part that I didn’t want is for my relationship with my mother to end with my relationship to my father. However, she wouldn’t, couldn’t allow it, because it was impossible for her since she was married to my abusive father, her abusive husband.
It crushed me, but I excepted it. I lost my mother because of my father. He took my childhood away by continually abusing me, my siblings and mother. He took my adulthood away by being tormented from the years of abuse and by having to endure the nightmares and after effects of horrible child abuse. It took me 10 years of intensive therapy to regain my life, to get stable. And my mother died 8 months before him so I lost her forever.
But I was one of the siblings that could not attend a memorial service in his honor. Those of us who faced the reality of the level of abuse we endured, who confronted the effects of the abuse, or who even had not dealt with all of the negative results of the abuse, yet still could not ignore it, were not able to have a memorial service that was respectful while still being genuine to the trauma we suffered through. A memorial that would have been honoring to each who had been deeply effected by the words and actions of my father.
But the memorial service was for those who did not want to bring up the memory of the horrific, torturous past that happen daily for the children and my mother for decades. They wanted to recall frozen moments in time and then particularly the past 15 years that my father suffered parkinson disease, until the very last year that he was basically bedridden and fed through a tube--really the years that he literally could no longer directly inflict horrific torture to them. For these siblings, and I must say for those who stood at his side as his caregivers (and my mother’s) they determined the memorial service he was entitled to.
And once again I am left to ask: Is a memorial service for the dead person or for the living?
I did not long to harm my father. I simply wanted to remain true to myself and my memory. I simply wanted to be validated that my life was real. And it was but it will not be validated by all my siblings. And that is okay. It is over for me.
However, so many of my siblings it is not over. And for some the hardest part of recovery is only beginning. My heart aches for those who can now grieve not only for the loss of their father but for the lost of their childhood. My heart aches for my siblings who are still having nightmares that they cannot control.
I love them and want their pain to be over. My experience is very different. I dealt with grieving for the loss of a father for two decades. My grieving time is done.
It happen two weeks ago.
For each of my eight siblings his death has been different.
I can respect this, but I am not sure all of my siblings can honor the different ways we have each responded.
Those who stayed in a relationship with him, even though he never actually admitted to abuse nor the gravity of the injury he causes in the lives of those he should have protected and provided for.
Throughout this blog and my other raw one shatteredglasslight, I have written about the abuse I endured and how I was learning to deal with it, heal from it and prevent the cycle of abuse of repeating in my own family. My blogs began in 2008. I have been through so much work to overcome my abusive childhood, and in the healing process I was obedient everyday to what God was asking me to do in order to heal.
Yet, that took me on a journey that meant I had to break off my relationship with my father. I didn’t only have to do it. After trying to make it work for over 40 years and continually being exposed to abuse and re-traumatized I wanted it to be over. The only part that I didn’t want is for my relationship with my mother to end with my relationship to my father. However, she wouldn’t, couldn’t allow it, because it was impossible for her since she was married to my abusive father, her abusive husband.
It crushed me, but I excepted it. I lost my mother because of my father. He took my childhood away by continually abusing me, my siblings and mother. He took my adulthood away by being tormented from the years of abuse and by having to endure the nightmares and after effects of horrible child abuse. It took me 10 years of intensive therapy to regain my life, to get stable. And my mother died 8 months before him so I lost her forever.
But I was one of the siblings that could not attend a memorial service in his honor. Those of us who faced the reality of the level of abuse we endured, who confronted the effects of the abuse, or who even had not dealt with all of the negative results of the abuse, yet still could not ignore it, were not able to have a memorial service that was respectful while still being genuine to the trauma we suffered through. A memorial that would have been honoring to each who had been deeply effected by the words and actions of my father.
But the memorial service was for those who did not want to bring up the memory of the horrific, torturous past that happen daily for the children and my mother for decades. They wanted to recall frozen moments in time and then particularly the past 15 years that my father suffered parkinson disease, until the very last year that he was basically bedridden and fed through a tube--really the years that he literally could no longer directly inflict horrific torture to them. For these siblings, and I must say for those who stood at his side as his caregivers (and my mother’s) they determined the memorial service he was entitled to.
And once again I am left to ask: Is a memorial service for the dead person or for the living?
I did not long to harm my father. I simply wanted to remain true to myself and my memory. I simply wanted to be validated that my life was real. And it was but it will not be validated by all my siblings. And that is okay. It is over for me.
However, so many of my siblings it is not over. And for some the hardest part of recovery is only beginning. My heart aches for those who can now grieve not only for the loss of their father but for the lost of their childhood. My heart aches for my siblings who are still having nightmares that they cannot control.
I love them and want their pain to be over. My experience is very different. I dealt with grieving for the loss of a father for two decades. My grieving time is done.
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