I found out that my oldest son’s “father” (again, term used loosely here)’s mother refused to fulfill her duties as next of kin upon her son’s passing, and she refused to donate any money to his end-of-life costs and ultimate cremation. Her own parents, for some ungodly reason, did the same exact thing. These people probably have the nerve to consider themselves my son’s family when their actions indicate anything but that to be true. It is absolutely inhumane for you to refuse to fulfill any aspect of your deceased child’s end-of-life wishes — and I’m not even talking about not being able to afford the costs, I’m talking about willful refusal here — and to see that your own parents made the same exact decision you did is horrifying. These are not people that I want to have anything to do with my son, and when their time comes, they better not count him as a relative or name him in their obituaries. I mean, to be succinct here: my abuser is dead. Furthermore, he died in an absolutely horrifying manner and I would not wish that on my worst enemy.

I definitely know who my son’s family members are, though, and by that I mean his actual family members.

This entire experience is also not something that I would wish on my worst enemy. At some point I have to attempt to explain to my son that his father is dead, and I will more than likely — quite here — have to launch into a discussion about what dead actually is, again, before I attempt to explain to him that he can never see or meet him. The last time my son saw his “father” he was four months old, give or take, and his “father” was swiftly court-ordered a justified denial of access to him that became permanent in the coming years. So many more people out there than I realized wanted him to, for lack of a better way to phrase it, “get his shit together” so that he could be involved in my son’s life. Sadly, that point never became a reality.

I am glad that the blow will be softened by the fact that he never actually knew this man as a father figure.