I found it really interesting reading your very personal, intense and detailed letter to your parents, @Stu54. Parts of it resonated with me, and I could feel how raw this must have made you feel as you wrote it.

I did a similar letter to my father shortly after he passed away. I re-read it some months after, and destroyed it. This was mainly because I didn’t want my son or daughter to ever come across it and have it shatter their memories of their Grandad, who they adored. As an aside , I often wondered if the effort he put into his relationship with his grandchildren was an effort to make up for the failure in our relationship.

Does the sharing of this letter with others help you in your own healing process?

I find, as I get older, that I get more forgiving. There were so many things wrong with the relationship between myself and my parents. In many respects, I was so much luckier than others have been; there was no physical abuse of me. I think I understood that my parents were just never equipped to be parents, and that if they were they starting out in their relationship in today’s world then they probably would never have become parents. They did what was expected of them at the time; got married, raised a family. In reality, neither of those things should have happened. I understood that my Mum struggled to be a parent. I think that understanding helped the two of us reconcile long after I had left home.

My last six months with my father were spent with him venting a lot of anger and hatred. His last words to me were spoken in anger (he was still of sound mind at this stage, it was just his body that had reached the end of the road). I pray to God I never allow my relationship with my own children (adults themselves now) to end that way.

After all this though, I wish I could have one more attempt to have a rational conversation with him. I wish he could have acknowledged who I had become, and what I had achieved, and genuinely have been happy for me. However, the reality is I just feel incredibly sorry for him now. He passed away with hatred in his heart. When I pass, I will pass with love in my heart, and that heals me.

Jeff.