My abusive father died in 1989, but he had been out of my life since 1980 when I was 15. No one had seen him since the divorce. I didn't know he had died until just a couple of years ago when a cousin found me on Facebook. We exchanged phone numbers, she called me, and gave me the news over the telephone. I'm not even sure how she knew, although she only knew that he had died, not how or when. Those details came later when my brother obtained the death certificate. I had initially assumed it was suicide, since he was 47 and had threatened it many times, but I was mistaken. He had a heart attack.

That cousin is significantly younger than I am and didn't have the memories of her uncle that I had, so I didn't want to freak her out by saying anything negative about him when she told me. Still, I wonder if I puzzled her by not reacting at all. "Oh, he's dead? OK." I felt nothing. No grief. Not even a sense of loss knowing that we would never have a normal, healthy, father-daughter relationship, even though I had been daddy's girl when I was a child. There was a bit of relief to know that he would never be a danger again--in times past, he had threatened to track us all down. To avoid triggering anyone, I won't mention here what he had said he was going to do when he found us, but it wasn't pleasant.

It has been hard for me to forgive him. He at least had the excuse of having an untreated mental illness. And, there was one instance in my childhood that he had a moment of clarity, suddenly stopped yelling and pulled me into his lap, and apologized to me. Because of that, I did find it possible.

My T explained to me the reason for my lack of grief. My father had been "dead to me" for so long that finding out he actually was gone made absolutely no difference in my life. The grief had already been dealt with.