Unexpected Death of Father Hidden By Stepmother

[AnonymousGrief]

We just discovered in an unpleasant way that my husband’s father passed away a month ago.

My husband’s father left his mother for another woman that he then married when my husband was very little. As he grew up my husband increasingly disliked and struggled to get along with his stepmother.    He has always loved his father very much, but he grew to really not be able to tolerate his stepmother at all.  She was very intrusive, overbearing, conniving and manipulative to the extent that he stopped having contact with his father a few years ago because he felt he couldn’t have a relationship with his dad without his stepmother’s presence and her exploitative, intrusive and meddling ways. 

 My husband and I have known each other since we were children and had gotten back in touch after about 18 years through his mother.  We had both been divorced and ended up realizing we had a connection and after more than three years together we just got married this past November in a very small “family only” wedding at a state park.  

My husband was so torn about having his father at the wedding during our planning  because he knew he would have to include his stepmother and even though he very much would have loved his father being included he decided to not include them or even send an invitation/announcement or reach out in any way because he literally believed his stepmother would find a way to ruin things.

So there has not been contact even though he would often start to call his dad and then decide against it because of his stepmom.  Even so, we were surprised to discover on Facebook the news that my husband’s dad passed away while we were looking at a group page we are on about the village where both sides of my husband’s family is from.  A second cousin of his who lives all the way in another part of the world posted a notice on the group page that many villagers might be surprised to learn of my father-in-law’s passing “recently” and that his wife will be flying to the UK later in the year to fulfill his wish of taking his ashes to his home country.

we were in shock to learn about his father’s death this way.  Despite much searching online we could find no details, no obituary or anything.  It was only after deeply diving into the bit of information his stepmother had posted publicly on her own Facebook profile that we learned he died over a month ago.  We still don’t know of what.  Only that he apparently went on hospice at the beginning of January and had previously been hospitalized in November around the same time we got married.

Apparently there was no obituary at all and obviously no local memorial service.  It’s a strange limbo and there is such little info and I don’t know how to help my husband with this profound loss, grief, depression and sense of limbo with no foreseeably adequate manner of closure for my husband, my stepchildren and step-grandchild who were hurt by this as well.

 I don’t know what to do to help or what to do with this mountain of anger I want to direct at his stepmom for so many things.  When my mother died I was able to see her one last time, have people around me as we remembered her and felt like there was an appropriate closure and acknowledgment.  I don’t know how to handle processing this kind of monstrousness perpetrated by someone who posts extremely hypocritical “be kind”, altruistic dog and pony show fodder on her social media when she deliberately did a lot to keep my husband’s father’s passing from being public knowledge to anyone other than the select few she deemed worthy of information.  I’m angry, disgusted and hurting so badly for what my husband and his kids are going through.  They don’t get to have any closure in this, really, and it’s horrible.

[reader]

Dear anonymousgrief;

I am so sorry for your loss. What his stepmother has done is deeply painful and hurtful. I wish people could show more care and consideration and compassion during these difficult moments. It is highly hypocritical of her to post on social media about being kind when she is quite the opposite.

Maybe your husband can post his own obituary and have his own service for his father. And if he wants to maybe talk to a grief counsellor or try to join a support group in the community. Especially during these sad and difficult times it’s so important to have more support.

Thinking of your family.