Grieving the loss of an abusive parent is a unique and complicated experience, unlike any other kind of grief. When my father passed away, the sadness I felt wasn’t just about losing a person; it was about losing the possibility of something better, something I had always yearned for but never received. I knew for years that my dad was on borrowed time. His cancer diagnosis was 8 years ago, maybe even 10 years back, honestly, the exact time escapes me now. But despite knowing that, I never really believed he would die. He seemed like the kind of person who would just keep going, fueled by his own bitterness and anger. I used to tell people that he was too mean to die. And yet, just a few days ago, he did.
Losing someone who has had such a profound yet painful influence on your life is a strange, unsettling experience. My father’s life was marked by hardship and poor choices, and those choices didn’t just affect him, they hurt everyone around him, especially me. As his daughter, I was the primary target of his emotional cruelty. My earliest memories are shadowed by a sense that he despised me. I can’t claim to know how he truly felt because he rarely showed any emotions other than anger. I remember only two instances when he told me he loved me, both times under the influence of alcohol. That lack of love and approval shaped my entire worldview, making me believe that I was the problem, that I wasn’t smart enough, good enough, or worthy enough.
This belief led me down some dark paths. I sought validation in all the wrong places, becoming promiscuous in high school and entering relationships with men who mirrored my father’s flaws, hoping in vain to win his love through them. When he asked me to move my wedding to my childhood church, I did, thinking it might finally make him proud of me. But no matter what I did, I never earned his love.
When I was going through my divorce, and the abuse I had suffered from my brother came to light, my father made a choice that cut me deeply. He disowned me, choosing to support another abuser instead of his daughter. Despite clear evidence of the truth, he told me that I was no longer his family, that he never wanted to see or hear from me again. That kind of rejection is brutal. But even after that, I tried. A few years ago, I sent him a birthday card, telling him I loved him and expressing a hope that we could reconnect. He never responded.
I was fully aware that he was dying slowly, and I prayed that as he neared the end, he might see the person I had become, see the good I was doing in the world, and reach out to me. I held onto a fragile hope that he might, in his final moments, tell me that he was proud of me, that he loved me. But that hope was in vain. Instead, I received a cold, impersonal text message notifying me of his death. After years of wondering how I would feel when this moment came, I was still caught off guard.
How do I feel? Disoriented. Who exactly have I lost? I’m nearly 50 years old, and many of my peers have already lost their parents. Their grief is public, marked by ceremonies, social media tributes, and visible mourning. But with my father, it’s different. I feel both numb and deeply wounded. This grief is unlike any I’ve ever known. When my beloved aunt died of cancer, the grief was straightforward, understandable. This? This is a tangled web of emotions that I can’t easily unravel.
I find myself in turmoil. Am I angry? Sad? Hurt? Indifferent? Do I even care? Should I care? What will people think of me, those who heard me say, "He’s too mean to die"? Do I have the right to feel sad? Will people judge me for mourning when I’ve said such harsh things? Am I as strong as I’ve always pretended to be? The truth is, I’m not. But I know one thing: I deserved a father who loved me, and I deserve to grieve the death of that father, even if he only existed in my hopes.
What I’m mourning isn’t just the loss of a parent, but the loss of what could have been. The loss of a dream I clung to, that one day, my father would see my worth, tell me he was proud, and offer me the love and validation I desperately needed. That possibility is gone now, forever out of reach. I’ll never receive that loving embrace, never attend a funeral to mourn a great man because, truthfully, my father wasn’t a great man.
There’s also a heavy burden of guilt. I know I should take time off to grieve, but what will that look like? Am I going to attend his service? Probably not. Will I help with the arrangements? No. So what do I do with this time? Am I supposed to be picking out caskets or writing eulogies? Should I just return to work and pretend nothing happened? After all, he disowned me, and I disowned him. Does that mean I should simply carry on as if this were just another ordinary day?
And yet, beneath it all, there is profound sadness. Deep, soul-wrenching sadness. I longed to pick up the phone one day and hear his voice on the other end, telling me he was proud of me, that he loved me. In that moment, I would have dropped everything to be with him, to give him all the love I had stored up. But that call never came. I reached out, but he turned me away, and eventually, I couldn’t keep trying. Still, I never blocked his number, even when family turmoil flared up. I held onto that tiny shred of hope that maybe, just maybe, he would reach out one day.
Now I’m left to face the reactions of others. When people offer their sympathies, saying things like, "I bet he was so proud of you," I’ll know deep down that he wasn’t. When they say, "I’m sure he’ll be missed," I’ll have to confront the reality that he probably won’t be. And there’s a certain shame in that.
There’s also an unsettling sense of incompletion. This doesn’t feel like the resolution I imagined. His presence, even from a distance, has always loomed over me like a dark shadow. Now that he’s gone, it feels like that shadow is starting to dissipate, but I’m left wondering if I’m truly ready to live without it. Has that darkness been so constant, so familiar, that the thought of living without it is more daunting than I ever realized? Is the freedom I’ve longed for actually something I’m afraid to embrace?
People who haven’t walked this path might think they understand what it means to lose an abusive parent. They might assume that his death brings relief, a sense of release from the chains of that painful relationship. But the reality is far more complex. The grief doesn’t just evaporate. Instead, it takes on a different shape. For many, losing a parent means mourning the memories they cherished. But for those of us who have survived abuse, it’s about mourning the lost potential, the hope that things could have been different, that there could have been a chance for healing, for reconciliation, for love.
When an abusive parent passes away, it’s not just the end of their life; it’s the end of any hope for a different story. For those with loving families, grief is about the absence of something precious. But for someone like me, the grief is rooted in the absence of something that was never there…the love, acceptance, and connection that should have been but wasn’t. It’s the pain of knowing that the opportunity for that relationship is now lost, irretrievably gone.
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