Hmmm

It turns out that even the death of a crappy parent is cause for mourning. Not for everyone of course. But for Bill, who always said he wouldn't be affected by the death of his father, seems to be having some mixed emotions now. We had a nice talk the other night and he said he's feeling a little depressed and "I don't know why". He really wasn't able to verbalize it but I told him I thought it was normal to feel that way, it was his Dad after all. I think he was a little surprised that he was sad.

Oh, and that promptly gave way to the anger part of grief. That's more like what I expected.
He's angry because his Dad didn't 'leave' him or his siblings anything. I don't know what that's all about. I mean, his Dad didn't have a will because he didn't have anything to leave anybody. That doesn't seem weird to me at all. He was also ticked off because his Dad chose to take full benefits from his pension instead of the survivor option. Basically that means that when he started collecting his pension, he chose to take the full amount until he died vs a smaller amount so that when he died his survivors would get something. Again, that doesn't seem crazy to me. There are 5 kids for heaven's sake. They wouldn't have gotten much. When Mom retired, I told her to take the whole thing - she worked hard and scrimped and saved her whole life so she could retire and be comfortable - I don't want any of that!! Geesh.

I think he just still has a lot of bad/ugly feelings about his Dad and now that his Dad is gone, he doesn't have anywhere to pin them. I suspect that little by little though, he'll have to let go of them. Grief is different for everybody.