Yesterday was the tenth anniversary of my father's death.

[Aristus]

I remember making the announcement here in the Lounge, and the outpouring of support and well-wishes from my Lounge friends. It was very gratifying.

The really sad thing is: I wish I could say I miss him. But I don't. He wrecked my family, and blamed my mother for it. He never took responsibility for anything he did wrong. And when he announced that he had pancreatic cancer, I tried with all my might to reconcile with him one last time. He not only never opened up to me, he told me and my sibs to our faces that he was not going to allow our mother to attend the funeral. When he said that, I nearly got up and walked out on him one last time. When I told my brother this several years after our dad died, he told me he was glad I didn't.

Anyway, I try in my life never to make the mistakes he did. I'm going to make my own mistakes, and that's fine. But I don't want anyone I love to feel indifferent to my death when it comes. I want to be remembered fondly. I hope that's not too egostistical a thing to wish for...

[Fla Dem]

1. A lot of emotions in your post. I'm sure you have exceeded your own expectations as a good person.

I feel great sympathy for any child that did not grow up in a loving and nurturing childhood. I can say I fortunately did and miss both my parents everyday many years later.

[Aristus]

2. That's very kind, thank you.

The truth is, I did actually have a loving and nurturing childhood. My brother and I were looking back on our upbringing a while back, and we both characterized our childhoods with the same word: 'idyllic'. It really was.

But my Dad had more emotional problems than he could handle, and refused to seek help for them. He had PTSD from his medical service in Vietnam, he was shattered by the death of his own father in 1980, and his retirement from the Army after a lifetime of nothing but military service was a severe shock to his system.

Our family started to unravel when I was about fourteen. His friends pleaded with him to get help, and a psychiatrist he had known in the Army offered to treat him for free. He didn't listen. Possibly overwhelmed by the burdens of a lucrative, but immensely stressful corporate job, he cleaned out our accounts, skipped the country, and left my mother to raise three difficult teenagers by herself, and meet mortgage payments too high for her to cover on her teacher's salary.

He finally got his life back together, returned to the States, re-married, and resumed his career in medicine. His life was stable and prosperous at the end, but he never was quite motivated to knit things back up with us. He had his new family and that was that.

[vlyons]

3. I did not have a happy childhood

I had a manipulative, overbearing mother, who thought obedience to her every whim and agreement with her every opinion was love. And an emotionally absent father. I'm 72 now, and they are both long dead, but their negative influence lives on in my mind. About 10 years ago I gave up hating my mother, and strive every day not to hate anyone. As a Buddhist, I know that anger and hatred are poison. Those who nurture anger and hatred are not happy people. I'll bet that if you look with discerning wisdom at your father's life, you'll see that he was not a happy person. He probably grew up in an unhappy environment and never encountered any wise teachers, who showed him how to open his mind and his heart.

I lucked out and found Buddhist dharma teachings. It has made all the difference in the quality of my experience.

My best wish for both my parents is that they had the most auspicious rebirth possible into a loving family with early access to wise teachers.

[Aristus]

4. As always, I salute the wisdom of Buddhism, and its insight into human nature.

I'm sorry to hear about your unhappy childhood, especially since, as I pointed out, until age 14 or so, mine was a magical childhood, filled with wonder and excitement.

I knew long before he died that my father had had an awful childhood. He was used as a rope in a tug-of-war between his parents, neither of whom loved him. They just hated each other more. Each of his parents married many times, and my father was often at the mercy of abusive or uncaring step-parents. Once, my grandfather kidnapped my father from his mother, and took him across the country to live with him and his latest wife.

My mother never allowed any of us kids to express negative things about my Dad; she always stuck up for him because she knew about his past, and how horribly insecure he was. My father was intelligent, and immensely gifted, but he was always so afraid of success that he sabotaged himself whenever he could. That, according to my mother, was his greatest tragedy.

[lunasun]

5. I hear you. I however feel no concern over my own lack of missing some of my family just because it

is the norm.
You were there for siblings at the time of his death, and that is a good thing
No remorse or ongoing reflections is OK
I also do not feel any envy over others who had a great relationship and miss family members dearly.
I have sympathy for their lingering loss as I also have lingering loss over some who have passed on, but for others there is none.

Just different circumstances and nothing I can do about it .
I do not expect everybody to understand either

& Yes learn from life's lesson

[Archae]

6. I know exactly how you feel, it's been 9 years now since my Dad died, and I don't miss him either.

He didn't know how to be a Father, and was a dictator to my Mom.
Not abusive, but still dictatorial.

Also dictatorial to us kids.
When I bought a car that HE didn't pick out, he threw me out of the house.

And VERY opinionated.

He hated with a passion anyone not white Christian.
Not the KKK-type, more the "Keep them out of MY neighborhood" types.

Blamed the Jews themselves for the Holocaust, and always, I mean ALWAYS, used the n-word when mentioning blacks.

In the 9 years since then, my Mom has adjusted, but she still misses him.