This post is hard for me, and I ummed and ahhed about writing it for a long time. It’s sat in my drafts folder for a few weeks, often being edited, and re-edited, with the question of “should I just delete this?” not far from my mind. So why am I sharing this? Simply because I imagine a lot more people experience conflicting emotions when a loved one passes, and I want to break the silence on this issue.

All my life I have been taught that you do not speak ill of the dead. You cherish their memory and focus on their positive attributes. They cannot defend their actions and so you must pretend their imperfections never existed. So imagine my confusion when my father, who was both my idol and my abuser (yes, I will say that, because that is what he was), died.

When I was 9 my father passed away of a heart attack following a long battle with MRSA and septicaemia. I’d awoken early one morning to hear what I assumed was an argument between my parents (as was often the case) and quickly realised something more sinister was happening. He died on arrival to the hospital.

I don’t remember a lot of the immediate aftermath as I was very young, but I do remember an overwhelming urge to bottle up my emotions. For a long time, and I’m talking years here, I was numb. I completely blocked it out and went on as if nothing had happened.

Fast forward a few years and my mum met her new partner. Suddenly I had all this anger and resentment flooding out of me towards someone who just wanted to make my mum happy. This is where my dad became sacred in my memory. I removed all memories of his temper, violence and psychological manipulation and instead treated him as if he was some kind of god who could never be replaced. I refused myself to think badly of him, as if doing so would somehow confirm my mum could be happier, or at least happy, with someone else. I refused to allow my mum’s new partner to replace my god-like father.

Repressing these emotions couldn’t last. As I grew older and went out into the big wide world, my mum stopped shielding me from the true memory of my father. I think to begin with she felt similarly to me, you can’t speak badly of a dead man, but eventually we both had to admit he had his flaws, big ones. She began to share more memories with me of his anger, his manipulation and his downright abuse. To begin with, I hated this, I felt my mum was trying to turn me against my dad – I had blocked out every single bad memory for so long I was able to deny that what she was saying was real. But I couldn’t shake some of the emotional memories she had elicited in me. Gradually, more and more memories came through, and I began to recall my father’s abuse.

In true BPD nature I then spent a period hating my father. I was angry and hurt that he could be so cruel and callous toward the people he claimed to love. I began to idolise my mum for putting up with him, and refused to feel sad about his loss.

It’s taken me a long time to find a grey area, as my BPD makes this really difficult, but I’ve taken time to learn more about my father, his parents (who were long dead before I was born) and why he behaved the way he did. I now see that my father was probably traumatised, if not certainly also subject to physical and emotional abuse, as a child, and simply didn’t have the skills to express his emotions appropriately. When his own father passed, he too held conflicting emotions towards him and struggled to process this and I think a lot of those emotions seeped out in unhealthy ways. He was also hindered by a number of longstanding physical illnesses, and I sense he probably felt like a failure as a result, as he was unable to work or provide for his family in the latter part of his life. I now see my father as someone with his own mental illnesses, although I couldn’t claim I know enough to say for sure which ones, and who never felt able to get support. His pride and perhaps ignorance to mental illness prevented him ever acknowledging his own issues. He grew up in a strong Irish family where emotions were not acceptable for men to express.

Today, I am able to accept my dad for who he was; a loving father, and an abusive father. Both of these things are true, and neither cancels out the other. I am able to empathise with my father, without condoning his behaviour, and accept that he simply didn’t have the tools to cope as a parent, based on his own past. His loss elicits both a sense of relief and an overwhelming sense of sadness.

It still feels hard for me to speak ill of my father, and I’m sure if many of my family were to see this post they would feel anger towards me. But I want to highlight that it is okay to speak about a loved one as they were, both good and bad. Grieving for such a person is so often complex and turbulent and it was only once I accepted both sides of my father that I was able to fully grieve his loss.

 

L x