This afternoon my sister is going to hold a memorial service for my mom at the church she used to attend. My dad has informed me he plans on going.
Which is fine. I told him he could be my personal representative because I won’t be there. (Yes, sadly, the rifts that started between my sister and I when my mom first got sick have only gotten bigger. Now I’m not on speaking terms with her.)
I was only joking about the personal representative thing, but my dad did sort of feel he needed an excuse. For a variety of reasons.
Reason 1
None of us expected my mom to pass before my dad. Not him, not me, not Wayne, not even my mom.
See, when Wayne’s dad died, Wayne’s mom showed up. It shocked everyone. (Bear in mind Wayne’s parents had been divorced for almost 30 years, and that was the first time Wayne had seen his mom in at least 10 –if not more. It was actually the first time I’d even ever met her.)
Anyway, that made an impression on my dad.
“Do you think your mother would show up to my funeral?”
“I don’t know, dad.”
“I’ll be curious to see if she will.”
“How are you going to know? You’ll be dead!”
“Don’t be a smart aleck.”
(Hey, it’s my job as a daughter to be a smart aleck. Besides, I come by it honestly. I get it from him.)
Ever since then, though, from time to time my dad has commented both that it’d be nice if my mom bothered showing up to his funeral, or, when he’s really crotchety and reliving bitter memories, that he hoped I’d tell her to stay at home.
“She didn’t want anything to do with me when I was alive. I don’t see what she’d get out of coming to my funeral.” (My mom was the one who filed for divorce, something my dad never wanted.)
But now the shoes are on different feet. He finds himself having to decide if he really wants to go to her funeral.
Reason 2
No, not so much if he wants to, but rather if he’ll have the guts to. Yes, their divorce was messy and as far from amicable as relations between the U.S. and the Taliban, but there’s also the matter of my sister. She’ll be there. And she won’t be happy to see my dad.
She’s refused to see him for years now. Heck, they live 10 minutes from each other but he’s only spoken to her by phone a dozen times or so in the past 12 years. (He had a heart attack 12 years ago, and, much like she did when my mom got sick, my sister flipped out royal. My dad’s girlfriend took the brunt of that storm, and after that my sister hasn’t had anything to do with my dad.)
Reason 3
But he did spend roughly 25 years with my mom before they divorced. As he puts it, “We had an awful lot of hard times, but we knew some stinking happy ones too.”
Even though he’s never admitted it to me, he’s never stopped loving her. I know because I’ve seen it in his eyes.
Going to her funeral will give him some closure on that chapter of his life –and maybe, just maybe, bring some much overdue peace to his heart.
Related Articles
The Experience of Losing a Parent