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I had sushi for lunch with R.
I had a walk with M.
Not a lot of excitement otherwise, until my father called unexpectedly. I asked him why he didn't tell me when my mother died at the beginning of October -- I found out quite by accident when a cousin by marriage on the other side of the family mentioned that she was thinking of me after the memorial. My sister had also asked our father this question; he had no answer for her. I pressed him. Was it JW policy? No answer on that. Some stuff about how I refused to see my mother back in April. I explained that given our interactions after I quit being a JW, it seemed the height of cruelty to risk triggering those extremely painful emotions in her when she no longer had even the capacity to speak to express herself or her wishes. This seemed a new idea to my father, which really brings home the total inability to see things from any other point of view. He tried to make the failure to tell me this as somehow being related to me being DF'ed -- I'm not, I'm DA'ed, and that hadn't stopped him telling me about any other funeral, including his brother's fairly recently. And it also doesn't explain why he didn't tell other cousins, who were never JW's, and whose contact information he has (they haven't moved in 30 years). So then he started yelling that he wasn't going to justify himself, and he didn't call me to be chewed out.
I wasn't chewing him out. I did however want an explanation. In the absence of one, I eventually offered him the branch of, hey, oversight, or maybe you delegated and it got dropped. He calmed down.
He repeated a lot of what he had said in previous phone calls about my mother's progressive decline; I told him he had already told me all this (it's a script, and it goes for about 20 minutes and I've already heard it three times). He got mad about that, too, felt like I was cutting him off (well, yeah, actually).
I got the "I can't talk to you because you are not a JW anymore" routine again. All through this, I kept asking him why he called. He never had much of an answer. So I made sure he wasn't lonely, and there were people who were visiting him. I know he's fine for money, but it's no good being completely isolated from any perspective, and I told him I'd try to call more often to check in on him. He seemed happy about that.
He followed that all up with a phone call to R., my sister. He did not give her the JW spiel, but she's clever. Every time he seemed headed off in that direction, she had some questions for him about whether he needed anything, and that seemed to work well.
We've all got shortcomings. I get that. And I certainly understand that the center of his universe is now gone, and that's got to be hard (which I did express, along with the obvious statement that no one could possibly have expected him to do more than he did. He views this as a loving thing to say; I'm like, dude, the obvious truth. Factual statement). I have zero expectations that I will age gracefully. In the meantime, I'm going to try to do enough right by my children so that they will enjoy being around me when I am declining from old age. And hopefully, no cult will further damage any of my family relationships that have not already been hopelessly distorted.
ETA: I'm not sure this is coming through, so I'll say it straight out. I'm honestly really surprised he called, and really surprised he didn't hang up on me. There were some long pauses. I'm _reasonably_ certain that if we'd had this kind of conversation 20 years ago, he would have hung up on me. I can't tell if loneliness has changed that dynamic, or if he has lost the ability to convince himself -- this is a core tenet of JW -- that if he just ostracizes a little harder, we'll come running back.
I had a walk with M.
Not a lot of excitement otherwise, until my father called unexpectedly. I asked him why he didn't tell me when my mother died at the beginning of October -- I found out quite by accident when a cousin by marriage on the other side of the family mentioned that she was thinking of me after the memorial. My sister had also asked our father this question; he had no answer for her. I pressed him. Was it JW policy? No answer on that. Some stuff about how I refused to see my mother back in April. I explained that given our interactions after I quit being a JW, it seemed the height of cruelty to risk triggering those extremely painful emotions in her when she no longer had even the capacity to speak to express herself or her wishes. This seemed a new idea to my father, which really brings home the total inability to see things from any other point of view. He tried to make the failure to tell me this as somehow being related to me being DF'ed -- I'm not, I'm DA'ed, and that hadn't stopped him telling me about any other funeral, including his brother's fairly recently. And it also doesn't explain why he didn't tell other cousins, who were never JW's, and whose contact information he has (they haven't moved in 30 years). So then he started yelling that he wasn't going to justify himself, and he didn't call me to be chewed out.
I wasn't chewing him out. I did however want an explanation. In the absence of one, I eventually offered him the branch of, hey, oversight, or maybe you delegated and it got dropped. He calmed down.
He repeated a lot of what he had said in previous phone calls about my mother's progressive decline; I told him he had already told me all this (it's a script, and it goes for about 20 minutes and I've already heard it three times). He got mad about that, too, felt like I was cutting him off (well, yeah, actually).
I got the "I can't talk to you because you are not a JW anymore" routine again. All through this, I kept asking him why he called. He never had much of an answer. So I made sure he wasn't lonely, and there were people who were visiting him. I know he's fine for money, but it's no good being completely isolated from any perspective, and I told him I'd try to call more often to check in on him. He seemed happy about that.
He followed that all up with a phone call to R., my sister. He did not give her the JW spiel, but she's clever. Every time he seemed headed off in that direction, she had some questions for him about whether he needed anything, and that seemed to work well.
We've all got shortcomings. I get that. And I certainly understand that the center of his universe is now gone, and that's got to be hard (which I did express, along with the obvious statement that no one could possibly have expected him to do more than he did. He views this as a loving thing to say; I'm like, dude, the obvious truth. Factual statement). I have zero expectations that I will age gracefully. In the meantime, I'm going to try to do enough right by my children so that they will enjoy being around me when I am declining from old age. And hopefully, no cult will further damage any of my family relationships that have not already been hopelessly distorted.
ETA: I'm not sure this is coming through, so I'll say it straight out. I'm honestly really surprised he called, and really surprised he didn't hang up on me. There were some long pauses. I'm _reasonably_ certain that if we'd had this kind of conversation 20 years ago, he would have hung up on me. I can't tell if loneliness has changed that dynamic, or if he has lost the ability to convince himself -- this is a core tenet of JW -- that if he just ostracizes a little harder, we'll come running back.