Mourning Girl Part One

I have said to Cheyne many times over the past five years that when my dad died, it would probably fuck me up.
That was an accurate assessment.
I come from a very dysfunctional narcissistic family system. I am an identical twin, one of the only two children my parents had.
When my father left my mother, she asked him if he wanted any photos of myself and my sister.
He said no.
Later my mom would say, "I tell you, when your father was done, he was done." In the months after the divorce, finally, we all told the truth. My dad had been a crappy dad. I didn't have to pretend, for five more minutes, that he cared about me the way my friends dads did.
My father called me that winter and invited my family over for Christmas.
I was a nervous wreck. I can't remember my father ever even initiating a conversation with me. We went over, met his girlfriend ( who he had cheated on my mother with and ultimately left with ) and he gave the kids gifts. This was nine months after the divorce and the only time he ever called. Ever. A few months later he was fired from his job at the hospital as a security guard. Later wild tales would surface about the grandiose lies my dad would tell while working this job. He hit on one nurse, telling her his wife left him when his twin girls were so small and he raised them on his own.
My mother worked at this same hospital at the time!
My father was a narcissist.
This was so normal to us, that I knew it was pointless to complain or expect better. We treated him, in a way, like a grown up child. He sat in a chair watching tv non stop. I know a lot of kids had "dads in chairs" but here is an example of the extremes in my house. I was on the school drill team and forgot my flash gloves. We lived five minutes from the school and my mom was working nights and I had to call my dad to bring them. I was cussed out. Because he was in the middle of "his show". He came to maybe two performances, one of which the only reason was because I was being awarded Star Dancer and threw a fit to have a parent there. He didn't mind that though. He preened and puffed. Not at all the man who threw a fit to not have to come.
I am not trying to malign my father. Or exonerate my mother, whose entire existence became a controlling and manipulative method of keeping everyone, including my dad, in check. We were pretty rudderless boats, my sister and I. We didn't get love, not the unconditional kind. As an adult I have empathy for my parents and the deep wounds they carried in ways they just couldn't overcome. But I can't paint a pretty picture of the past.
Fast forward to this year:
My dad gets sick.
My dad gets sick again. He has seizures. He has cancer and it spread to his brain. He is dying.
I rush to the emergency room to greet my sister. I wonder why she isn't hugging me back. She is sitting with my dads girlfriend. I visit dad briefly. My mom comes up and she and dad have forty five minutes together. My sister makes eyes at dads girlfriend.
Over the years I have asked my sister for my dads address. She claimed always to not have it.
You see. My sister is also a narcissist. Which she admitted in a text to me, also stating she had sociopathic tendencies.
Just like dad, we have a special set of rules for taking care of her. She needs eggshells, special treatment, people to keep her secrets, support her lies. She expects you to be without boundaries, to hold her sin for her so she can feel less guilty.
I found out my sister was having an affair in the middle of my dad dying.
I confronted her about it gently at the hospital where she smoothly and condescendingly denied all. Showed me pictures, called the man "old", even pulled my husband in on this. "this is who your wife thought I was having an affair with, can you imagine?"
I can't remember if this was before or after she pulled someone in from her church to pray over dad.
I had read the texts. I knew she was lying. But I just wanted her to stop.
The next day while I was at my mothers, grieving dad, and my sister, in a way, she called and told me how her "friend" just took her for sushi, bought her jewelry, gave her 500$ to buy gifts for the kids.
She is not content to get away with it. She is DESPERATE for a co conspirator.
This phone call was about how he and his fiancée were the family she never had, how she was not used to being loved for being who she was.
Within 24 hours she would tell me about the affair. That it had been going on for more than a year.
Right after Christmas she flew to San Francisco for New Years.
With her lover.
Lying to every single person we know, including her husband and kids and the fundamentalist church she attends and draws much of her support from.
Her 57 year old lover.
But I digress.
I had been visiting my father, having awkward visits. My sister would not have me participate at all in any memorial planning. ( Later she would state publicly on Facebook that I wouldn't "answer my phone" or "show up for the work". ) She also was taking large amounts of Xanax and anyone present would be sure that he was ONLY her father.
My sister pursued my father after he and my mom split up. They got together a few times over the years. Not sure how much, because my sister didn't always invite me. Usually, the two times I remember, in Christmas Eve or something she would mention having Dad over the next day for Christmas. Too short notice for us, which she knew.
I would tell random checkers at Harps about my father dying. I felt bereft, buying him new York strip steaks, almost passing out when I couldn't find chocolate covered cherries, his favorite candy. I luckily found some Hershey kisses with cherry cordial centers.
We brought the kids to see him. It was awkward. But important, I thought.
At my next one on one visit, my dad sat me down and let me know that I was not welcome, his girlfriend didn't want me there.
That's when I finally began to let my dad go. I told him I loved him. I thanked his girlfriend for caring for him. And I went and wept with a friend.
I have worked with dying people. Enough so that I respect their wishes.
So I went home.
I listened to Walls by Tom Petty and Rapture by Antony and the Johnsons and Good Ole Boys Like Me by Don Williams.
There were layers of things to mourn. Even just that finite knowledge that your family really won't support you when you are at the end of yourself.
I was wise enough to realize there WERE people who would.
More on that tomorrow.
For now, just know that at the end of yourself is a cliff. You will never know who you are, or how much you are loved, until you jump.