I’ve recently figured out the impact of my father’s behavior on me and how it made me feel pretty worthless for many years. The real impact came when I got mentally ill. It wasn’t a problem before, though.
Well, I worked through the illness and the psychological issues and came to a better place and had to decide what to do with my bitterness towards my father. It came to a head recently when my mother asked me to organize a big party for his 80th birthday.
I decided to do it, and I decided to try to do a good job. I wanted my kids to have as good an experience of my father as they could. And while I didn’t think of this at the time, this question makes me think it is a good idea to model a willingness to help your parents. One day, it will be their turn to choose to help out or not. There’s no guaranteeing what they will choose, but they will probably remember how I treated my Dad.
He’s a person, and he did the best he knew how, I believe. I don’t think he would have deliberately put this burden on me if he knew how not to. He still suffers from the same ideology that led him to treat me the way he did. It isolates him, but that’s what he believes in.
But that doesn’t matter. What matters to me is being the good son for the father I may not have had. I am being a good son for me, not for him. Maybe he deserves it and maybe he doesn’t. In my mind, deserving has nothing to do with it. What is important is how I feel about what I do, and that’s what I want to do. I want to give him a good experience if I can. Just because.
That doesn’t mean other people should do the same thing. All circumstances are unique. You do what you feel you want to do, not what you think you should do. That’s my advice. If it feels right to you, then do it, regardless of how he responds. He may love it or hate it. It doesn’t matter that much. You do what you are willing to do; no more and no less.