thank you for your wall of text, I enjoyed reading it.

His mother refused to visit. Old world “A mother shouldn’t visit her son, her son should respect her and come visit”. So he did. Then she guilted him into moving back home, giving up opportunities farther away. He is happy in the sense that he’s married and has kids and a fulfilling life, but he will always have the what if questions. What if his now wife and him had stayed, what if they had done this or that. I promise you, if you let them drive your life you will never be truly fulfilled.

Don’t we all have those what if questions? Maybe I ask because I’m myself unfulfilled with some parts of my life.

I’m not sure moving them or the surviving parent closer to me would benefit them: they’ve living in GA most of their lives, are used to the way people act and speak, climate is warm, and I live in NY, where people move faster, speak differently and it’s going to be cold… It would be easier for me but I don’t think they would enjoy upstate NY much.

The sooner you accept that their expectations of a “good son” will never be met, the sooner you can think more practically about how you want to proceed with life.

This is very good advice.

I’ve just also done the “Mom I’m not doing the guilt trip today. Your feelings are your own, I’m happy where I live and if you have a problem with it that’s your problem to work on, not mine”.

Stealing this.

Thank you for your post.

That’s the childish response I was talking about.

then I’m childish. Note I don’t say that meaning I should change. What I’m tempted to do is to agree with mother what to do with his corpse after he dies because I have the feeling she also hates some family members pretty strongly and would prefer to be her genuine self during a ceremony like this than having to cater to visitors and see the ones that wronged her, pretending all is fine and dandy.

People are flawed.

absolutely. As you said, I’m childish and don’t want to change. My father has the good traits and also the bad ones I mentioned. Why should I only mention his good side? Because we’re family? My father cheated on my mother, my mother forgave him. This I’ll never understand.

A funeral is a time when everyone who cared for you comes together to create the last impression. You, as his son, have a lot of power to make it a good one.

yes, with the ones I care about, the ones I respect, not with a bunch of rednecks.

As I understand it from your description, you have prioritized avoiding discomfort over attending his funeral (his final wish), and you’ve prioritized avoiding discomfort by telling him that you’re going to skip instead of even softening the blow by shouldering the burden of a white lie. You chose yourself twice over your dying dad’s feelings and final requests.

Because I don’t know what’s the right call here: do I treat him like the adult he always was, being brutally honest with him when dealing with difficult issues because we all die or do I treat him like a scared child incapable of having sound decisions anymore, a person that only reacts and thinks emotionally?

If you don’t accept and possibly forgive his humanity now, when will you?

this is a very good question. How does forgiving and accepting his humanity look like to you? Because to me, now, accepting his humanity means white lying to him, lying to him to hide an unpleasant reality. But this means I’m treating him like a child, means the father I always knew is gone.

You go to comfort and commiserate with the survivors.

agreed, with the ones I care about

yours is an interesting post, I’ll try to rebut it.

I don’t want to honor an important person by having to deal with people I don’t like, that in the past stated very clearly they don’t like my mother to the point of calling her a gold digger (and worse).

Something I’ll never understand is why my father is so accommodating with people like that for family’s sake. To me that makes him weak and lets others walk all over him, even to the point of disrespecting his own wife for ‘family’. This I’ll never understand.

To me doing what you propose means turning something pure into a show, a theatrical production.

I’ll have to talk to my mother about this. If he goes first, she’s the one who’ll decide.

I agree with you, just wanted to see how unpopular this position is

That doesn’t make any sense.

if what I described happens anywhere, why even change jobs?

Why is this such a big deal to you. So what if your co-workers enjoy their work. That has nothing to do with you.

because I feel this is a trap where I’m supposed to say that I love my job more than anything, because I think this is how managers search for the ones who only want a paycheck and to leave work stuff at the workplace, because I work to live, not live to work, because I only want to do my hours and enjoy my life away from my coworkers, because managers actively search for the ones who drink the kool-aid and believe they will get a promotion if they just try harder, because the ones who ‘enjoy’ their jobs are the ones happy to work for the manager for free, because the ones who ‘like’ their jobs are the ones less likely to establish boundaries (and enjoy being exploited).

Trying harder just means you get a pat on your back and a bigger shovel, not a raise.

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