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TheTruMooCow
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PathStep 1 Compassion hearts9 Forum posts1 Forum upvotes1 Current upvotes1 Age GroupAdult Last activeDecember, 2023 Member sinceNovember 29, 2023
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I cut off my father but now he’s chronically ill. How or should I rekindle our broken relationship?
Relationship Stress / by TheTruMooCow
Last post
 November 30th, 2023
...See more Apologies for the long post and any grammatical errors you may see, but I feel like certain details are relevant towards my situation.  *** My father and I have always had a sort of contentious relationship. We never had the opportunity to really “get to know each other” as most of my childhood was bounced between different relatives and my parents divorced, with my father moving states and my mother getting sole custody of her six children. Throughout the years I never had much contact with my father but would occasionally get messages from him detailing his new life. He would promise me and my two brothers (his biological children) that he would gain custody of us and start over; and for the most part we were ecstatic! Though, his promises were halfhearted and empty and usually never ended up coming true with him just abandoning contact all together. After hurricane Irma hit in 2017, my family relocated much closer to my dads new residence that was just a states away, and with that he began making promises of reunification again. This time, he was serious though and began gradually integrating my brothers and eventually me, to go live with him.  At this point I had just turned 18 but was still in school, so during summer break I made the trip to Utah and gave living with my dad a “trial run”! Things were less than great, however. While me and my father had quite a bit in common, his new wife and kids and I didn’t see eye to eye. They were manipulating, would spy on me in my room and tried downplaying some horrid events that happened in my childhood. On top of that, my dad would lie to my younger brothers, his wife and new children about things that I know FOR A FACT aren’t true. Terrible things about our childhood, our mother, all while conviently painting him as a ‘good guy’. Heck, the guy even lied about his military service!!  Things came to a halt when I went to return to my mothers, however. The plan was that my father, my brother and his new wife and kids would stay the weekend so that my brother can spend time with my mom(who he hadn’t seen in years atp) but ended up making the 8 hours commute back to his state as soon as I left the car. This infuriated me as another one of his promises turned out to be just another blatant lie of his! I messaged him the next morning, blowing up on him for his dishonesty and told him that, “while I loved him and wanted a relationship with him, that I just cannot unless he can admit to his lies and be honest with me.” Now, it’s been three years and my father has been diagnosed with a rare and incurable heart disease. Normally people with this disease have the life expectancy of 8 to 10 years, but he’s already nearing that time frame. I’m still so mad at him, but I feel like my time with him is closing. I want to reach out and try to rekindle what little relationship we had before it’s too late, but I don’t know how. Or if he’ll even be willing to talking to me( I know where I get my stubbornness from). I don’t want to have any regrets from not knowing, either though…So should I try to rekindle with my chronically ill father?
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