This Is For Me

Now, I have never had a great relationship with him, nor have anyone in my immediate family since he remarried. His new wife preferred to keep her own children and grandchildren separate from his own. So we rarely met, and barely knew one another. Today, and the few days leading up the burial, made that all the more painfully awkward. See, to my step cousins Papa Ray was a father figure and a man to lean on in times of need. He had the strength and selflessness they needed. But to me and my family all he ever was was Absent. It has been painful realizing how little my father has seen his own father since he remarried. My father was shaped by this man to be the same selfless, strong, caring, and gentle man he is... And he was forcibly estranged by him due to his father remarrying and acquiring a new wife , children, and grandchildren. So today, sitting in the funeral listening to all the traits that were spoken of and revered, all I heard were reasons why they couldn't visit, why they had to see other family, why they were not available.. And all I could think about was my personal resentment of the new wife and how much I missed out on seeing my Papa Ray. That and anger. Then I glanced up and saw my father crying. I mean sobbing. And my mother comforting him. I broke down. Not for my absentee grandfather, but for my father's absentee father. When he remarried two years after my grandmother passed from cancer, I can only imagine the hurt my father felt. But then to see his father move away from the life he made for himself, not to mention his deceased wife and two sons, to take care of a new family, must have broke his heart. So today at the funeral I wept and wept hard. For the family that could have been. For my precious father. For him and his precious father he had lost over 20 years ago. I don't think anything can hurt as feeling unloved by your own family.