The Shadow
DEAR ABBY: My mom passed away recently, and the person I was in a relationship with from adolescence to my adulthood, “Charles,” didn’t attend her funeral. While I’m currently in a relationship with someone else I deeply love, I still feel my mother was fond of Charles despite our many hardships. Her affection for him showed without a doubt, many times without my involvement. Despite my resentment toward Charles, it never swayed her opinion of him.
I no longer speak to Charles. This pattern was well set before Mom’s death. Because she cared for him, I think it was wrong of him not to show up to pay his respects, regardless of what our situation currently is. For the record, I didn’t attend either of his parents’ funerals because Charles liked to gaslight and cause drama.
Now that I’m no longer a teenager, I see him for who he really is. I thought I was in love at the time, but I realize now that I was still in the “age of innocence.” While I no longer want him in my space or life, I still feel his not attending was selfish and pathetic. Are my feelings valid? — MOURNING IN MISSOURI
DEAR MOURNING: Please accept my sympathy for the loss of your dear mother. That said, the time has come to let go of your relationship with Charles. You wrote that you no longer want him in your life, yet you cling to your resentment of him.
Funerals are for the LIVING. The deceased are past the point of knowing if someone attends or not. Charles may have stayed away because he knows you dislike him and felt unwelcome. Scrub him out of your head and stop living in the past. As the late Elie Wiesel once pointed out, “The opposite of love isn’t hate, it is indifference.”
DEAR ABBY: My girlfriend’s 36-year-old son refuses to work. He has every excuse in the book. No job is just right for him. Without any education or training, he expects to make $20 per hour. Even then, he either quits or gets fired. He has lived off family for all of the five years I have known him. He couldn’t find a job even part time last year, and never paid rent. We were forced to move.
Now we are in a 55-plus community that does NOT allow “children,” and her son is hiding in the living room and porch. He has created a cell for himself. If discovered, the community can evict us. How do we get him out? — PRISON FOR ALL IN FLORIDA
DEAR PRISON FOR ALL: The son is 36 and “hiding” in a cell he has created for himself? Is he mentally disabled? Taking drugs? After five years, it’s time you and your girlfriend formed a united front and gave her son a deadline by which to find a job and move. After that deadline, he can couch surf with friends if necessary. Then cross your fingers and pray the management of the community in which you live doesn’t catch on to what’s been going on, or you and your girlfriend may be looking for another home as well.
Dear Abby is written by Abigail Van Buren, also known as Jeanne Phillips, and was founded by her mother, Pauline Phillips. Contact Dear Abby at www.DearAbby.com or P.O. Box 69440, Los Angeles, CA 90069.
