My dad might be dying but I don't care that much.

[Bad Penny II]

The nursing home called, he's gone to hosipital
The hospital called, doctor with the cautious  voice 'cause I might be fragile.
My dad might bleed out but I don't care that much.
He wasn't a bad dad, I'd give a 6.5 .
Well I care but I don't feel bad about it.
I've mourned the passing of rabbits and budgerigars more.
I didn't mourn my mothers death either but she had Alzheimer's and walked out into the snow, there wasn't actually any snow but there was a barbed wire fence, a stroke/s and a few days in hospital.
I put my daughters childhood drawings in frames, I keep a two year old's doggy slippers in my cupboard.
I can be emotional but I just don't feel bad about my parents euphemisming.
I could pretend but I don't.
Parents can get inconvenient near the end, not like rabbits and budgerigars.

Parental lesson the last: How not to live your last days.
Ancient incontinent satyr is an ugly thing, snow is clean.

Expressions of sorrow for my you loss won't be appreciated.

I haven't asked a question and it's Ask Haf,,, should I  seek therapy so I care properly?
Or offer courses in how not to feel obliged to care?

[Recusant]

  I'll raise a glass to the ancient pudding, if it crosses my mind when I have a glass in my hand.

[Pasta Chick]

That all sounds perfectly reasonable to me. We aren't meant to live forever.

I felt relief when three of my grandparents died. I knew them and loved them and I do miss them, but they were also quite far away. They were not large parts of my life and they were all very, very ill by the end.

I felt relief when my grandfather passed recently too, but I'm also still quite sad (no condolences needed for me either). I did spend a great deal of time with him, and I see a great deal of him in myself. But by the end he was laying in bed 24/7 - not bedridden, he just didn't want to get up - with little memory, poor health and his money about to run out. If he'd lived even a few months more we'd have had to transfer him to a government funded facility which would probably have killed him. I think it's the tangible connection to our past I miss more than his physical presence.

[Magdalena]

...Or offer courses in how not to feel obliged to care?

I would attend the courses...


Your dad gets a 6.5, the woman who claims to be my mother gets a 1.2.
I didn't know you and I had so much in common. --This is good!

[Velma]

No reason to worry that you don't care that much. Some people do not deserve to be greatly mourned. Some take so long dying that by the time death comes it is more of a relief than anything else.

My father gets about a one. My mother gets about a 7. My mother hasn't been part of my life for years. My father gave up any claim he had to calling himself my father when he turned up at my brother's funeral demanding to know the whereabouts of my brother's money. Like I said, some people do not deserve to be mourned.

[Sandra Craft]

Emotions are weird.  I loved my Dad dearly, but haven't cried for him once since his death seven years ago.  I wish he hadn't died, and I dream about him still being alive and well sometimes, but even when my stepmother called me up to tell me he'd died that morning I felt sorrier for her than for him.  Maybe it was because I'd been anticipating his death for the past few years and I knew how unhappy he was with constant illness and the increasing limits on his life.  While I'm sorry he couldn't have lived longer and been healthy, I'm not sorry he was released from a failing body and, at the end, a failing mind. 

[Arturo]

I'm not sorry he was released from a failing body and, at the end, a failing mind.

That's a good way to look at it. Age and sickness claims almost all of us and death is the only release we have from those ailments. No longer suffering and no longer conscious to be able to know it's going on.

[Sandra Craft]

I haven't asked a question and it's Ask Haf,,, should I  seek therapy so I care properly?
Or offer courses in how not to feel obliged to care?

Neither.  There's too much therapy and too many self-improvement courses already.

[xSilverPhinx]

I've thought about the possibility of certain family members dying and in some cases strangely I can't really bring myself to care much either. Maybe it's because I've been feeling so numb these past few years, but it's just the way it is.

I haven't asked a question and it's Ask Haf,,, should I  seek therapy so I care properly?
Or offer courses in how not to feel obliged to care?

My answer would be, seek therapy only if you care enough about caring.   Otherwise, why bother?
As for courses for the challenged who care enough to want to care, I don't think the world needs another self-help guru or life coach, but what do I care? 

[Bad Penny II]

Thanks, you guys are above average, I rate youse a 7.2.

[Randy]

Once again, reviving an old topic.

For my father I grieved. For my mother not so much. She became manipulative because she didn't like my ex-wife living with me. I had a four bedroom house and I was alone. She needed a place to stay so I gave her one of the rooms. My mother needed the same thing so I gave her one of the rooms.

I won't get into the details but I finally placed her in a very nice home where she could get her medication on time, go to the ice cream shop, get her hair done, and other things. She was able to go downstairs and have breakfast, lunch, and dinner with friends at a nice dining room table with fancy dishes and flatware.

I got the call one night that she wasn't feeling good. Okay, maybe she has a cold. I have to be careful because I'm immuno-compromised. The next morning I was told I'd better come down there.

I got to her room and she was stiff as a board. Her mouth wide open and her eyes closed. Even though I spent every Sunday with her and picked up things for her from the store, I was relieved. Every time I visited she would sta4rt to complain about my ex. My ex was no where near her in that home so what reason does she have to complain?

Anyway, to this day I haven't grieved and it's been years. I guess it is wrong somehow but I can't force it. I simply do not have it in me. My father I grieved for when he died.