Do you mourn when a family member who was cruel to you dies?

[Pikantari]

I don't have any family that eve really treated me badly. I am on the outs with one of my sisters right now and I have no idea why or what happened, but if she passed, I would mourn her death.

I have had some people who didn't treat me well in life. For them, I would mourn for their family, but probably not for them, if that makes any sense. After all, most family members do not really know how their child/cousin/brother treats you and even if they do, I imagine they would think they were right.

I have an ex who treated me pretty bad but boy do his grandparents love him dearly. In that instance, I would mourn for them, over the loss of a grandchild.

[kevxu]

Originally Posted by nyanna

If you had a mother or father, or even spouse (or anyone) that was very emotionally or physically abusive to you die how does it feel? Do you still mourn? do you feel free?

My father was emotionally an iceberg, and worse a bully, and at home he was glacially silent and refused to talk most of the time. I can never remember that he once said that he loved me. At one point in life I hated and feared him. However, apart from his wife and family he was a gregarious and very sociable person, I learned to socialize with him in late adolescent, when he was in that hail-fellow-well-met mode in the village bar or when he decided to throw a spontaneous party at home. Then I was finally was able to engage a father that I could at least party with along with a gang of his friends. I also discovered that he was very quietly charitable...to a poor, small country hamlet church (he bought their winter coal supply, and stopped by to stoke up their furnace at 6 a.m.) and to a poor black family that was burned out of their shack...he bought them a large amount of food and some clothes, and a few other instances. I respected him very much that he did these things, and even more that he did not make a show of it.

He was awake his last two days, and desparate to talk, but he had cancer of the throat and could not. When he died I wept uncontrollably several times at this wake.

While I felt very sorry for his physical suffering, I wept because he was remote and cold and unloving to me, and now there would never be a chance to see if we could be more than boozing buddies. That, I suppose, is mourning of a sort, but mostly for opportunities, possibilities now lost forever, and less for the man that was. These feelings dissipated in a matter of weeks. I have almost never had "personal" memories or thoughts about him since then. When I think of him it is largely in terms of family lore about his younger days. He came from a large Irish/American family and the tales are many. But the period in which he was my father almost never comes to my mind, unless there is some specific photo or something to make it happen. He has become almost like a character in a 1920-30s James Farrell novel.

My mother was so self-engrossed for most of our life together, it is a miracle that she did not swallow herself alive. She never achieved a maturity or emotional stability beyond that of a twelve year old girl in the seventh grade. She could see people suffer and be heartless in her response, even to her sister, myself and her second husband. About age forty I had had it, and had only extremely rare contact with her, by my active and expressed choice. I felt a flash of very brief disbelief when I received a phone call that she was dead. Other than that I have never felt anything remotely like grief or mourning. For me she had died more than a decade before, and the mourning was done then. When I stood there and reflected on what I had just been told, I felt a great sense relief.

My mother was so irrational and manipulative - and though I suspect I know how this developed in her youth, and self-absorbed that when I think of her it is with distaste. And unlike what has occurred with my father, I have not created any mechanism that has softened and romanticized her memory. I see her as an essentially willful, destructive b*tch, And the most I can say is that she seems to have largely replicated the conduct of her own mother, whose viscious and hysterical outbursts of temper were spoken of with awe by her other daughters. Her mother's brother murdered two innocent men in a rage, which was the result of a deluded scenario he had worked up over a few months. Perhaps the entire family was mad as hatters.

[tamiznluv]

Originally Posted by second right

I didn't mourn when my father died. He was horrible, just horrible to me (physically) and I broke off all contact 27 years ago.

Above said, I do find myself questioning what I could have done differently. These questions usually present at night and make me suffer lack of sleep. But as morning comes, I realize, there is nothing I could have done...and then the roundabout thinking starts again. As in, why did he hate me so? I was broken as a toddler by my father, so I don't know any other way.

Never, ever ask that question of yourself, second! YOU are not to blame, YOU could not have done any different. You are the victim of your mother's poor choice. You were a baby, he was (supposedly) an adult. You had no choices, he had many.

I am sorry that you had to be brought up like that.

[L'Artiste]

Originally Posted by SocalPitgal

Maybe her Karma for being so evil to you. Maybe she was evil to many people, including her fiance.

She wasn't evil to her fiancé . I found out from his other exes(it was national news so I saw in several comment section) that attempted to kill them to in murder suicides she was just the first he succeeded in.

[cloven]

Originally Posted by nyanna

If you had a mother or father, or even spouse (or anyone) that was very emotionally or physically abusive to you die how does it feel?

I had extremely fraught, off & on relationships with my parents (they'd divorced when I was a kid, so my dealings with them were separate from each other).
I had positive and negative interactions/feelings towards them both-so I felt alternating waves of sadness and relief. Grief at the aspects of them lost (which I did enjoy & value), relief at never again having to be subject to theirmod edit up behavior/treatment of me. I miss them, and I don't miss them: ambivalence, through and through.

My mother was medication-avoidant bipolar, and my father was a functioning alcoholic, though I was not aware of these factors when I was growing up (only the disturbing effects). There were many situations that could qualify as them being abusive towards me, and I held those resentments (painful & confusing lessons) even as I benefitted from when they were behaving better (predictably, stably, more functionally). Hence, my intense mixed feelings towards them while they were alive-which remain mixed, now that they're gone.

It depends on which parts of them I'm reminded of in the present: if I think of something that I'd have liked to discuss with my mother or father, I feel sad and lonely at their absence. If I recall how awful they made me feel (so often), then my sentiment is instead "thank goodness, that's over with-I wouldn't be able to cope".

Originally Posted by nyanna

Do you still mourn? do you feel free?

Do I mourn ? Infrequently...as it's been a few years since they died.
Do I feel free ? Somewhat...moreso than while they were alive.

Originally Posted by SocalPitgal

I had been without him in my life so many years, it was like he was already gone years before he died.

Originally Posted by anifani821

Although people don't usually want to hear it (so not something I would say except to my very closest of friends) I have had family members die and just felt relieved, for many reasons.

Originally Posted by anifani821

People want to hear you say you forgave someone "at the end" or you found you had conflicting emotions after they died, etc. But for some of us, we had let go of any emotional attachment long b/f these people died -- so there isn't any emotion there at all except relief.

These are how it is/was for me with some family members.
I feel like a jerk admitting this, but it's true.

For example, my grandparents were already "gone" in my mind many years before they actually passed on, because they weren't part of my life by then-but I didn't bear them ill will, either.

However, the exception is one of my grandparents: he had a seriously terrifying explosive temper & as a result, I'd refused to acknowledge him from the time I was 12. That was when he "ceased to exist" from my perspective, though he lived another couple decades.
It wasn't a mere "grudge", I made a self-protective decision to never let him near my mind & body again. I stuck with that-and still have no regrets about how I dealt with him. It was more important that I take care of myself rather than be further traumatized by his actions. No, it didn't reach the level of "abuse" legally, but nonetheless it was beyond reasonable (for me to endure).

[AudiDriver]

Originally Posted by Pikantari

... I am on the outs with one of my sisters right now and I have no idea why or what happened, but if she passed, I would mourn her death.

Forgive me for butting in here, but life is to damn short. At least try to find out why this happened.... one day you won't have this option. If you get turned down, at least you know you tried.

[maggie2101]

My oldest brother died earlier this year and I don't mourn him at all. He was very mean and angry his entire life. He called me and both of my sisters terrible names, beat us up, and was downright hateful to our mother who took care of him until she died. I don't have one pleasant memory of my brother and that is sad.

His cremated remains are still sitting around for the three of us sisters to decide what to do with them.

[Dollydo]

My mother is the person in my life that I would not mourn when she dies...She was and is an abusive self centered alcohonlic. She is 87, and still as toxic as she was 65 years ago. I no longer associate with her and will be at peace when she dies...my luck...I'll die first and never have that moment of relief.

[tamiznluv]

When I was pregnant with my first child, I was with my mother moving my nana out of the old folk's apartment complex down to my parent's house here. My nana started to fight with my mother about something and I piped up from the backseat, "Nana, don't you talk to my Mother like that!" WELL, Nana turns around and says "I hope your baby is born dead." My mother nearly ran off the road. Mom screamed at her but good! My love for that woman died right then and there and I had loved her with all my heart. I went with Mom to Nana's funeral a year and a half later to give Mom support but I never shed a tear and I still haven't, 50 years later. Never will either.

[maggie2101]

Originally Posted by tamiznluv

When I was pregnant with my first child, I was with my mother moving my nana out of the old folk's apartment complex down to my parent's house here. My nana started to fight with my mother about something and I piped up from the backseat, "Nana, don't you talk to my Mother like that!" WELL, Nana turns around and says "I hope your baby is born dead." My mother nearly ran off the road. Mom screamed at her but good! My love for that woman died right then and there and I had loved her with all my heart. I went with Mom to Nana's funeral a year and a half later to give Mom support but I never shed a tear and I still haven't, 50 years later. Never will either.

Holy moly, that is tough. I'm so sorry you had to hear that.