"AITA for not going to my estranged father's 3rd wedding because I despise the woman he's marrying?"
AITA for refusing to attend my estranged father's 3rd wedding despite the rest of the extended family actually attending?
New-Awareness9701 writes:
So, apparently, my father and his wife of 7 years have decided they want a wedding where people actually show up this time. The background is that they got married when I was 16 and my sister was 14.
We didn't attend the wedding, and neither did any of our father's side of the family (his parents, siblings, nieces and nephews, cousins, etc). There was a lot of backlash over this because all of them (who were born at the time, obviously) attended his and my mom's wedding.
The reason my sister and I refused to attend, and we basically ran away the morning of, to a family member's house, is because my father was marrying someone who tossed letters Mom wrote to my sister and me for our milestones. She died a little over a year before our father moved his second wife in (they were engaged at that point), so those letters meant everything.
And his wife wanted no traces of Mom, so anything that was hers was gone. Photos, clothes, jewelry, personal items, her phone—it was all tossed, and my father did nothing to stop her.
When the letters came up, she was remorseful, or appeared to be, but there was no coming back from that. There was no coming back with our father either because he let it happen. He stood there and watched her toss our mom from the house item by item.
My sister and I saw our father in a very different light after this, and our anger at him was palpable. I stopped calling him Dad after it. The next two years for me were the most tense of my life, and my sister had four years to go. I left at midnight on my 18th birthday and went to a family member's house. I had packed all my stuff that night and walked, and I have not been back there since.
I have been (mostly) no contact with my father since then. He reached out to talk to my sister and me once. We met him and we talked. We told him we understood he was chasing happiness again and acknowledged that he acknowledged he should have done better.
But we told him there was no repairing things. I told him I couldn't look at him the same way ever again, and I couldn't pretend to be happy for him and his wife. My sister told him something close to what I did.
The reason our extended family didn't attend my father's second wedding is because they don't like his wife; they pretty much hate her. But now they are willing to attend because the marriage has lasted a few years now, and apparently, they're happy.
My sister and I refusing to attend the wedding is going down badly. My father tried to reach back out and begged us to come and show support and give them the perfect wedding. He said it won't be perfect without his kids there.
It was his wife who basically told us we should be willing to accept their flaws and embrace them as our family and treat them with more kindness than we are. She accused us of behaving maliciously to ruin their wedding. AITA?
OP responded to some comments:
MirandaInHerTempest says:
NTA! NTA NTA NTA. Screw that noodle-dad and his noodle-loving hag. He couldn't grow a spine so his children could have the last memories of their mother. There are ways to enter a widowed family, and this absolutely AIN'T IT.
That was so cruel, I would not be able to forgive that. If someone told me there was a letter from my father to me somewhere I don't know what I would go through to get it, but a lot. To see it casually tossed as a powerless child? I am dying inside. I am so sorry. The family validating this marriage are the jerks.
OP responded:
What sucks the most is we didn't get to even read one of those letters. They were for certain milestones in our lives and we hadn't reached them yet. My grandma mentioned there were even some for potential weddings and future babies and knowing I never get to know what mom said is still something that haunts me a little bit. Losing her was hard enough but it felt like we lost her all over again.
HatingOnNames says:
I can't imagine ever forgiving something like that. No way would I attend their wedding. That woman couldn't be "supportive" when it came to the loss of your mother but wants you to "support" her remarriage to your father?!? Nope.
If I married into a family where the kids lost their mother, I'd treat her items like gold, preserve everything I possibly could, and wouldn't mind one bit having her pictures still displayed around the home so the kids would never forget her. I'd put her clothes and items somewhere safe so the kids could have them when they're older. I grew up with the best stepfather ever and couldn't imagine being any other type of stepparent.
What happened to you is exactly what happened to my own mother. As a grandchild of a woman who passed away when my mom was only 8, losing everything about our grandmother is still heartbreaking. No pictures except what I found by stumbling on her high school picture decades later. I didn't even know what my own grandmother looked like until I found that picture.
OP responded:
Yeah, that's the thing for me. I'm no longer angry like I was and have let it go mostly. But that didn't equal forgiveness and it doesn't equal a relationship. What is means is I am no longer simmering with rage when I think about what happened and can live a happy life, which I am.
I'm SO sorry your mom had to live through this experience as well. And I'm sorry it took so long to find any photos so you could know what your grandmother looked like.
What do you think?