If you caught my When putting yourself first means divorce post, you’ll know that my father passed away suddenly and unexpectedly last Monday. He lived in England with his second wife. I’m here in Colorado and it’s been a draining week filled with phone calls and emails as we all try to come to terms with my father’s passing.
Communicating for us has a few logistical challenges -my sister lives about an hour and a half away from my Dad, my brother and his family lives in South Africa. There’s a seven hour time difference between us. That doesn’t make it easy to be part of the decision-making. When I came to give my requested input on a couple of decisions, I found the decisions had already been made and I was too late. That was hard because I felt my voice wasn’t important. I’m trying to let it go – in the bigger picture, it’s unimportant. I know my sister is doing her best to help my step mom and I know some decisions can’t wait.
The funeral is set for Monday November 9 so I’m getting ready to head to England. Both my children said they wanted to come and so they are. Funerals do bring families together and they create and maintain bonds. With a family that is as spread out as ours, it’s life’s major events that bring us together geographically.
My son and I leave on Friday. My 16-year-old daughter is coming out, on her own, on Saturday – her high school gymnastics team has made it to the State championships and although she’s not competing, she wanted to be there to support them. They found out last night they’d qualified and were so excited – I knew then it was the right decision to let her fly out a day later – the state championship will be a high school memory she will hold dear for her whole life.
When I told my ex about Dad, he was as shocked as I was. We’d been together for 20 years when we got divorced and he had had lots of contact with my Dad. A couple of days later I told him about the funeral arrangements and asked him to OK the children coming which he did without hesitation. Then he said he felt that he should come. My gut reaction was ‘no’ but I know well enough now not to react immediately so I just asked him to let me think about it.
As I thought about it, I knew that I would feel very uncomfortable with him at the funeral – would he want to travel with us? Would he stay at the same bed and breakfast? Would he want to eat meals with my family? And so on.
At the same time I realized that a funeral often brings closure. It’s an important part of the grieving process. How could I deny him that if that was what he needed to do? I decided that the best approach would be for us to talk about it and rather than saying no, I told him that I understood why he wanted to go and that I would very awkward. He said he would think about it and get back to me.
He did get back to me in an email and saying he appreciated how I felt and my considering his going to the funeral and that he would not be attending. I am so thankful about this – I really didn’t want the stress of being around him at the same time as dealing with my Dad’s funeral. Wonder what the etiquette gurus would say?
I’ve told my step mom that I would like to talk about Dad at the service so I’m about to start writing that. We decided I should write it out and then if I can’t do it, the vicar can take over. If you have any tips on maintaining your composure and not crying, I need them…