It’s taken me over a month to write this. I’ve been back and forth with myself, repeatedly drafting and deleting, hoping that the urge to write would fade… but it hasn’t. So today I decided to bite the proverbial bullet and post – albeit a much more concise, less angry version of my initial ramblings – but at least I’ve transferred my thoughts and sent it out into the universe. I may decide to delete it later, but we’ll see. 

My father passed away at the beginning of July. 

This was not unexpected – he was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer last year. However, while this is usually a heartbreaking experience in the life of anyone who loses a parent, my situation was complicated. My father was not a nice man, and he and I had not seen each other or spoken in over twenty years. 

When my sister (the only person who remained in contact with him) told me a year ago that he was dying, I decided that I would be there when the time came to help as much as I felt I could. I knew that the rest of my family wouldn’t be interested (and they had every right to feel that way), but I didn’t like the idea of her having to go through that alone – there were no feelings of grief on my part, but it felt like the right thing to do. So when he passed away, I did just that – contacting his friends, former colleagues and organisations that he was involved in through social media, putting together a playlist of his favourite songs, writing the eulogy for my sister to read out. 

I told my clients, but decided not to share with many people in my personal life, and still haven’t. I wasn’t interested in having more discussions about it than I needed to. I also wasn’t interested in anything to do with his personal possessions, estate or will, telling my sister I would happily sign anything I needed to in order to not be involved.

And then, WHAM. 

Pictures of a face that I haven’t seen for over two decades were suddenly everywhere. Social media tributes, kind and thoughtful posts on websites, articles in the local papers where my family still lives, all extolling the virtues of a wonderful, kind, helpful man. 

They had no idea. NO IDEA. And it made my blood boil. It was difficult to bite my tongue and reply to messages from a neutral, professional perspective, and after a while it began to feel like it was to my detriment. 

After several weeks of complicated, painful incidents that resulted in the resurgence of things that I thought I had dealt with years ago, I found myself stood at the back of a crowd in a car park, watching my father’s coffin be taken into the crematorium. There were lots of people in attendance – far more than he deserved – and I went and sat at the back with The Bloke. 

I found it strange at how detached I felt from the whole situation. There was the coffin with a large picture of him in front, and the programme with his name and date of birth and death underneath. And I expected to feel something… and didn’t. I sat and listened as the eulogies were read… and still nothing.

The only time in which I felt upset was when they played a particular song at the end, so I left through the back exit and went and composed myself. I wasn’t overcome with grief, but I needed a bit of time to calm down as I was preparing to meet my father’s entire family for the very first time. 

At 41 years old. 

At his funeral. 

Anybody else thinking this could have been an episode of Dallas?

Due to circumstances between his family and my parents, I had never met a single one of them. I wasn’t even aware of their existence beyond the names of his parents and two sisters. And within the space of 15 minutes outside the crematorium and then during a few hours at the wake, I met them all. 

And thankfully, they were LOVELY. All of them. Kind, warm, friendly, and, as I discovered, we all had quite a lot of things in common. One of my cousins even looked scarily similar to my youngest sister. We had the same interests, one was married to a social media manager, one of my friends from school had taught another one of my cousins at college. My father’s sisters, their husbands and his mother came and sat with us at the table, and I particularly warmed to one of the husbands in how kind and intelligent he was. 

For me, the funeral was the closing of a very long and painful chapter, and for my own reasons I don’t wish to further my relationship with them now the funeral is over. But it was genuinely nice to meet them all and to spend a few hours with them. I’ve made it clear to my sister that her own decisions are nothing to do with me, as long as there isn’t an attempt to involve me. 

It’s been a few weeks since the funeral, and in all honesty I still haven’t decided how I feel about it. I suppose it will resolve itself in time, but for now I’m grateful that it’s done and I can move on.