How Do I Mourn the Grandfather I Never Loved?

How do I mourn the Grandfather that I never loved?

Today I got a text from Dad informing me that his father passed away. He asked that I not share it on Facebook because there wasn’t going to be a funeral and he didn’t want to draw attention to it. He finished by telling me that we all know that by now it was really a blessing since the man had been barely hanging on for a while. He was 101.

I felt…well I’m not sure. I’m still not sure. We’re often told that family is family and you’re supposed to love your family. But I don’t know if I ever loved my paternal grandparents.

Growing up I was often told how incredibly lucky I was to have four living grandparents. And I fully acknowledged that. But what most people never realized is that I really only had a relationship with two of them. My Mom’s parents were, and still are, everything to me.

But my Dad’s parents were always another story. He wasn’t even that close with them himself, and neither was his sister who I had been incredibly close to. They were verbally abusive to my Dad and my Aunt when they were children, and were frankly just not nice people. My Grandmother has never been without a nasty word to say about my Aunt or my Mother, and I often felt she treated me differently than my brothers because of my close relationship to the women she degraded. My Grandfather wasn’t as outwardly vicious, but he was often her silent accomplice. I don’t remember ever hearing something positive from him.

When I was a bit older I learned more. After I was born my Aunt came to my parents with something serious to discuss. She told them that her father, my Grandfather, had molested her when she was a child. Now that they had a girl she was scared, and it moved her to come forward after decades of keeping it a secret. Naturally, my Grandfather denied the accusations and my Grandmother called her a liar. Regardless, my Dad never left me alone with them. Ever.

I think that when someone we know dies, how we feel about it is a bit of a reflection on their lives and the kind of people they were.

When my maternal grandmother passed away I was devastated. I dropped everything I was doing, and took 3 airplanes, flying across the world to make it to her funeral.

So how am I supposed to feel now that this abuser, who I happened to be related to, has died?

I feel sad for my Dad and everything his parents have put him through. All the abuse and stress. The guilt that they heaped on him whenever he tried to put distance between them. The way they often manipulated him and took advantage of his kind nature.

I feel sad for my Aunt, who suffered at her father’s hands, and never got the acknowledgement or justice she deserved from him. The effects of what was done to her have followed her throughout her life. If I cry at all in this situation, it’s because I’ll be crying for her.

But I don’t think I feel sad for the loss of my Grandfather’s life. And I think that that’s ok. We shouldn’t be obligated to love someone just because we are related to them. If someone is a toxic and bad person, it’s ok to disconnect from them, to decide that this person doesn’t belong in your life or your heart.

Yet, there’s also a part of me that feels like I should be mourning him somehow. But maybe that’s just because it’s what would make sense for most of my friends when they lose a family member. So it leaves me contemplating a number of questions. How do I mourn the grandfather that I have never loved? Am I obligated to mourn someone because we are related? And finally, how do I come to terms with the death of a man who was responsible for harming those that I do love?

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