so confused... rambling...

[Phoenix]

my dad has started hospice and his end is nearing and I just feel so confused by it all...
I don't know how I feel... how I feel about him... how I feel about him dying...
He is still with my mother and so having to interact with her is wreaking havoc on and in me...
but after all these years I'm do disconnected from my feelings and my body that I know something is wrong and that I'm upset but I don't even know why and so can't figure out what to do next...

my dad was never around when I was growing up in the US (his job was based in Switzerland and he traveled all over the world for it.. he also had other kids in England). my mother was a truly terrifying monster but was brilliant and managed to manipulate us all. my younger sister, husband and i actually think she might be slowly killing my dad by withholding medication/medical care which is why I have had to stop the NC for now.

my younger sister and I had a long conversation last week trying to figure out how we felt about my dad - whether we held him responsible for seemingly looking the other way while we were growing up and just trying to stay away as much as possible. He's had such a hard life himself - holocaust refugee - spent his teenage years in an orphanage in a country where he didn't know the language... his first wife ran off with another man, his second wife committed suicide while their children were teenagers and then he married my mother who is a narcissistic BPD (in fairness - she also experienced extreme trauma as a child at the hands of her parents and it ended up destroying any shred of humanity in her). My father was wealthy and 30 years older than her - so I think she just wanted to pretend he could be HER father. Joke was on her because he lost his money shortly after they married... but by then she was living in a new country with a new baby (me) with no friends and no job prospects since she was a drop out.

anyway... where are these ramblings taking me? i thought i had decided to be at peace with his impending death and that - shrug - it didn't matter because I don't get attached to people anyway, right? but then it seemed i was repressing good memories with him as well as the bad... my sister started pointing out how similar him and i were in many ways with our avoidance and our (at times unhealthy) devotion to work. then, this week, my older sisters flew here from england to see him and my oldest sister continued that thread... making excuses for him and trying to show me who he really was - or had been - before my mother's influences...

now I don't know... is this all building up to realizing I do care about him, only to be devastated by the loss of him after so many years of NC? I guess.. better to realize it with a short time remaining than no time? (though he's not quite all there anymore so it won't matter to him)... or maybe this can just be a way of growing closer with my sisters (who I have always been distant from because my damage plays out in avoidance of connections/relationships)...?

my sisters have said that they will not return for the funeral because of my mother and so we are discussing celebrating his life in his old haunts in europe... but is it strange that I am looking forward to celebrating him more than being with him over the next couple of weeks? I want to rewrite him in my mind to be the fantasy father - and I can't do that while reality still confronts me... I don't know... it's all so painful... two days ago I went to their house and when I said goodbye to him he touched my arm briefly... but it seemed like it was a loving gesture and I ached and then cried the whole car ride home imagining what life would have been like if he had been a real father (like I see my husband being to our girls).

ok... ramblings over... just don't know what to do with myself since I can't seem to express this to anyone in my real life

[Dutch Uncle]

Hi phoenix  , what a confusing time you are going through. Hugs to you. 

You are experiencing and feeling a lot of emotions right now. This is all OK. No matter what has happened between you and dad and narcBPDmom and sisters and in between you all and ... Your dad's end is nearing and you bet this will send you into an emotional spin.
You are OK. You are you, and you are not the problem here, if there is one.


If at all possible, acknowledge all that you feel, and all that you don't feel but think you are supposed to feel.
You are not supposed to feel anything that you don't feel. You are under no obligation at all to feel anything you don't feel. And you are free to acknowledge anything you DO feel. Be it love, be it anger, be it confusion... It's all OK. It's you. Good memories, great. Bad memories, sucks. It's you, they are your memories. Having these memories as such is neither bad nor good, morally speaking. They are yours, and thus valid by definition.

I wish you strength, and weakness, in the days, weeks, time ahead.
Feel free to ramble along here as much as you like. It doesn't sound as rambling to me, at all.