Son can't decide whether to tell mom about deceased dad's 'negative' journal he found.
When this man is disturbed by his father's journal, he asks Reddit:
'AITA For Never Telling My Mom About My Father's Secret Journal?'
I'm currently 40 (M) and have two older siblings. My dad died about 7 years ago. My mom is in her late 60s. Mom would occasionally refer to how marriage was a storybook marriage: the Facebook version of a happy life.
Parents were married at 18 and together for almost 45 years. Mom was understandably devastated when he passed. He'd been having some major health problems for years so my siblings and I all knew it was coming.
She is very much is into avoiding any sort of conflict and sugar-coating her world so I think it did really blindside her when he finally died. Similar to how she can't even understand that her current health problems will likely get the best of her sooner rather than later. Though, I've been surprised before: I didn't think she'd make it a year after Dad died.
When my dad died my mom kinda shut down. She had a small income and burned through about half a million in life insurance over the next 3 or 4 years. My sister and I kept advising her to sell her house and downsize but she just couldn't do it. Eventually the stress got to her and she had a heart attack.
My wife and I dropped everything and drove halfway across the country for a month to see her and help out.
While we were there my wife and I went by the house to see what she would need to get rid of. She had done an estate sale which had gotten rid of almost all of the furniture but the 3 car garage was pretty much entirely full of boxes. It took us over a week in 100 degree heat but we went through every single box in that garage to find and save any important stuff.
One of the things we did find was a journal my Dad had written in. He had purchased it when I was 14 and wrote in it very occasionally over the span of about 3 years. There are 14 entries in the journal over that span. It's written in such a way that he never expected anybody else to ever read it.
It's really, really negative. He obviously treated this as some sort of catharsis at a low point in his life. He writes about how awful his life is. How his wife is stupid and useless and spends way too much money.
How his kids have no respect for him. How he can't do anything because they take all his money. While I always was positive on my father I actually gained a ridiculous amount of respect for him reading that journal.
I think this journal would destroy my mom. My wife and I spoke about it after we both read it and decided not to tell her about the journal. We took it back home with us after we left. My mom was able to short-sell the house and buy a small house next to my sister.
As her health is getting worse she's now sold that house and moved in with my sister. She's spent a large chunk of the past year in the hospital or in rehab. She has a lot of physical health problems including a kidney cancer that is complicating things.
So, Reddit, I ask you this: Am I the AH for never telling my mother about my father's secret journal? (full story in comments) AITA?
Let's find out.
pattyleelex writes:
NAH -but as a woman who has been married over 30 years, I can tell you that your mother has likely not invented a storybook version of their history. She has simply chosen to focus on the positive times in their lives.
There are times that I have hated my husband with a passion, times I wanted to leave him and those rotten beasts to whom I gave birth. I wanted to change my name and witness a crime so the government could move me to some hole and keep my identity secret. I didn't even like the way the dog looked at me many times.
The monster I married is the love of my life and my heart aches to think of a day I could be without him. Those beasts? I want them around all the time, I want to tell everyone how great they are and I am only ever as happy as my unhappiest child. Your dad, instead of acting out of rage or disappointment, instead of going into WitSec, took to pouring his feelings onto paper.
They would not surprise your mother - in fact, she might have even been able to pinpoint some of the things going on in your family during the entries, and echo his sentiments completely. You're most likely better off not sharing the journal with her, and you don't even need to keep it.
But you never know, some day you want to open it and write some less than flattering notes in it yourself. It's okay to have feelings, even when they're bad ones. We should simply strive to keep the memories of the good ones more alive than the bad.
zopafor writes:
NTA at all. There is no reason, at this point, for your mother to ever know those thoughts were in his head. He could have been in the middle of a mid-life crisis at that point, and just gotten past it. It would seem that might be the case since he didn't continue with the entries. Let your mom keep her storybook ending. It does no one any harm to let her believe that.