I started talking to a grief counselor, and she wants me to journal about my grief.  I can do that.  Hell, the only time I ever journal is when I am trying to make some sense of my grief.  I didn’t tell her I already blog about it, but that’s irrelevant. 

I’m not good with counselors.  I can smell a scripted approach.  I picked this one because I plugged all my needs into a website that could find me a counselor based on my insurance and my problems.  Her’s was the second profile that came up.  In her picture, she was standing outside in rain gear in horrible weather, smiling like she had just climbed Mount Everest.  She told me later that she was standing in a hurricane in that pic.  That picture and her credentials were enough to sign me up—extensive post-graduate work in grief and trauma.  I think she’s going to unearth a lot more than grief.

So this entry begins my “grief journal.”  One of my brothers, the one I don’t like, didn’t give me a Christmas present this year.  I think it’s because he knew there wouldn’t be any blow-back from Dad.  It’s a sinister assumption to make, but my brother is sinister.  I can picture him ranting to his wife about how he’ll keep me in the loop until Dad’s gone, then he’ll make a neat, clean break.  His DNA is 50% ADHD and 50% anger.  Life has no meaning for him if he has nothing to rage against.

I told my new counselor a little bit about him—that he’s a narcissist, that he ruined his children, then turned his back on them, then turned his back on me.  But I won’t let him ruin me.  Why is all this coming up in a grief journal?  Well, we have no more parental glue.  My kind brother wants to foster more communication.  My narcissist brother wants to be free of any obligations to a sister who clearly thinks she is better than he is.  His words.  As I write this, I wonder which one of us needs the counseling more. 

Everyone—family, colleagues, friends—loved and appreciated my obituary for Dad.  I made him human, my husband told me.  My eulogy will do the same.  I will send him off as the dad that I remember, not the one my brothers do.  But I’m not stupid.  I know that they had a very different experience being raised by young parents.  My mother was nineteen when the first of my brothers was born.  And she told me stories about trying to parent in the ‘60s, and it wasn’t pretty, and my dad was far from saintly.  Dad tried to tell me the same from his angle after she died.  He had a lot of guilt.  I told him that everyone has their regrets, everyone has made their mistakes.  The secret to happiness is you don’t dwell. 

Poor Dad was convinced he was going to hell.  I think that’s why he clung to life for so long.  The truth is, like my obituary expressed, that he was a deeply caring and complex person, a man many many people loved.  You don’t earn that status by being a bastard or alienating your children.