My father died 3 weeks ago and I only got to know he was ill because my sister’s eldest son rang my eldest and told him my father had gone into a hospice.
We’d had a row on the phone about a year ago (I live over 200 miles away) and because I was always afraid of him I just didn’t ring him.
Just after he married my mum he was sent to India and by the time he came home I was 4 months old, it took him 4 days before he would even look at me, never mind hold me! My mum cried to my gran...is there something wrong with my baby, D won’t even look at her! And so after that I was the butt of his hand and foot, trying to kick my high chair over because I was banging my spoon on the ‘table’. I remember him throwing spiders in my face age 2, giving me a good hiding for eating his strawberries, at the age 8 dragging me out of bed for stealing his lemonade or his sweets when I protested he gave me another hiding for lying to him, it was my younger sister all along. She would just flutter her eyes and say ‘it wasn’t me daddy’! It didn’t matter what it was I always got ‘the punishment’. He even blamed me because mum wouldn’t have sex with him, when I asked her about it she said ‘no, I wouldn’t, after the way he treated you I didn’t want another child for him to abuse. Asking about my sister she said he’d got her drunk at an RAF do.
I tried to run away when I was about 11 because I thought I wasn’t his child but I made the mistake of telling my friend, who told her mother and she stopped me as I got to the end of the road!
I did go to see him in the hospice but by the time I got there he was pretty much unconscious. If my sisters son hadn’t had a bit of a conscience I wouldn’t have got to know about his dying and I’m disgusted that my sister couldn’t be bothered to let me know but I suspect she was under orders from my younger daughter whom I now call my ex-daughter, she fell out with me after I spent 2 years looking after her and her 2 babies and husband. She treated me worse than a slave and I got that I couldn’t take anymore from her. So I left my flat near her (She’s disabled) and moved up north.
Sometimes the slightest thing can stop someone from giving you the information you should have but I don’t accept that they have too much to do etc as the reason for not letting you know. My ex-daughter obviously took charge of the funeral because there was even a message from the son of an old (dead) friend of my father’s whom he hadn’t seen for about 30 years! Yet I wasn’t even asked to contribute, seems both my ex-daughter and my father have managed to poison the rest of the family against me and I have to just accept that I am NOT and never will be part of the family!
Black sheep springs to mind!