In 2010, my therapist finally suggested that I estrange myself from my family because they've been my primary abusers since I was a little boy.  The abuse started with wife beatings by my father on my mother, then spread to his beating me bloody, and eventually apparently spread to my dad's workplace, too.  I was estranged from him at the time because of another of his violent physical attacks at Christmas 1991, but apparently in the late 1990s my dad got in trouble with his church he pastored as a missionary in Peru. 

The church board kicked him out, the US missions board kicked him out, and then the government of Peru deported him.  Despite getting the same guilty verdict from all 3 entities, though, he blamed his downfall on me, even though I hadn't had anything to do with him for 8 years then, and didn't know about his Peruvian scandal until years after it happened.

I got back in touch with him because his scandal brought about a nervous breakdown after which he could only mow lawns for a living.  But in 2010, he got belligerent at Christmas again, and my therapist suggested it was time to get the point.  It wasn't a quick decision.  In therapy with him for 6 months I wrote a tender, sad goodbye letter to him, and said I wouldn't be there at his funeral, but that didn't mean I didn't love him.  It's just that I couldn't love him in person.  He convinced all of our extended family that I was a liar, and so I couldn't stand next to his grave to mourn him like a son should have a right to do for his father.  I believe that's why after my health took me out of my hospital work to a teaching job I took up teaching death and dying classes to nursing students.  In part, it was to prepare for grieving my parents in absentia.  

At my new college job I met an ex-FBI agent who taught criminal justice classes.  It turned out that he had been a member once of a church my father had briefly pastored.  Against my wishes, he began to allow my father to use him to relay unwanted messages to me at my workplace.  I went to Human Resources to get it to stop, and it did.  Then the ex-FBI agent retired.

Today he called me, though, out of the blue.  I hadn't heard from him in years.  Now that he's retired, there's no way my Human Resources office at work can stop him from workplace harassment on behalf of my father.  I screened his number and didn't answer, but he left me a voicemail telling me to answer him.  He didn't say, but it's probably because my father has died.

I know there may be those here who may not understand that this boundary must be kept, but just trust me, it must.  No good has ever come from my going back to my family time after time.  I need to stay away and love them from a safe distance.  My mother became abusive, too, over the years, and beat me, too, as a child, breaking household items over my head herself.  My only sibling is a sister and she is abusive, too.  I've saved myself from becoming like them by moving away and staying away.

I knew this day would come and that I'd have to ask for support to be strong and be silent in the face of all of the conventional requirements to be a good son and go to my dad's funeral no matter what.  Or my mom's, if it's hers that's in question.  It's the movie of the week ending.  But my therapist taught me that life's not a movie of the week.  Sometimes we have to do things differently.

By coincidence, I'm recovering from surgery, so I couldn't go even if I wanted to.  It's so ironic that the demands of their deaths should come at a time when I literally don't have the life resources of my own to satisfy them as I'd normally want to do  This is a crisis I've prepared for since 2010, or for 8 years now.  Support welcome.