Grieving someone you had a difficult relationship with

Most writing about grief assumes the relationship was good. A great many are not, and the people grieving them are left without a framework and frequently without permission.

Why it is harder

There is no simple feeling to have. Relief, anger, sadness, guilt about the relief, and grief for a relationship that never happened, all at once and frequently in contradiction.

The possibility of repair is gone. Many people carry a hope, however faint, that things might have improved. Death removes it, and that loss is separate from the loss of the person.

Others do not understand. Sympathy is offered on the assumption of a loving relationship, which requires either performing a grief you do not feel or explaining something you may not want to explain.

The funeral is a performance. Standing among people saying kind things about someone who hurt you is a particular experience, and it is common.

The dead cannot be argued with. Whatever the last conversation was, it is now the last conversation.

The things people feel and think they should not

Relief. Extremely common, particularly after an abusive relationship or a long illness. It is not evidence of a defect.

Nothing. Numbness, or an absence of feeling that people find alarming. Frequently a protective response and frequently temporary.

Anger at the dead person, which feels forbidden and is entirely reasonable.

Grief that is more intense than expected, which surprises people who thought they had detached, and which is generally about the loss of possibility rather than about the person.

Envy of others' straightforward grief.

All of these are documented and common. None of them means you are handling it wrongly.

What helps

Naming what you are actually grieving. Frequently it is not the person. It is the parent you should have had, the relationship that never became what it might have, the apology that will not come.

Being precise about this makes it manageable in a way that undifferentiated grief is not.

Permission not to perform. You are not obliged to attend the funeral, to speak, to accept condolences graciously, or to say anything you do not mean.

Many people find attending useful for closure, and many find it retraumatising. Both are legitimate.

Having somewhere to say the true version. One person, a therapist, a journal. The public account and the private one do not have to match, and holding only the public one is corrosive.

Letting go of resolution. There will be no apology, no acknowledgement, no repair. Waiting for a feeling of closure that will not arrive prolongs it.

What is available instead is a decision to stop waiting.

Writing to them. Not to send. Saying what was never said, without needing a response. Frequently recommended and frequently helpful.

Estrangement specifically

Where there was no contact, the death arrives without the preceding illness, without the visits, and frequently without notification until afterwards.

Additional difficulties: being excluded from the funeral or from information; other family members' reactions; questions about whether the estrangement was right; and the finality of a decision that always had the theoretical possibility of being reversed.

Worth saying clearly: estrangement is usually a decision made for good reasons, by someone who tried other options first. Death does not retrospectively invalidate it.

The regret that arrives is frequently not about the decision but about the necessity of it.

After abuse

A specific and under-discussed situation.

People who were abused by someone who has died frequently experience relief, and then guilt about the relief, and then a resurgence of memories that had been managed.

Family reactions can be additionally painful — relatives who did not believe, or who continue to praise the person publicly.

This is a situation where professional support is genuinely worth seeking. Bereavement services and trauma-informed therapists exist and this is within their scope.

The unhelpful things people say

"He was still your father." "You'll regret it if you don't go." "Whatever happened, she loved you." "You should forgive."

None of these is your obligation. Forgiveness is sometimes helpful to the person doing it and it is not a duty, and it is not required for grief to resolve.

What to say to someone in this situation

If you know a relationship was difficult, do not assume.

"I know it was complicated. How are you actually?" opens a door that "I'm so sorry for your loss" closes.

And accept whatever answer comes without correcting it.

The long view

Complicated grief after a complicated relationship frequently takes longer, and it frequently resolves into something workable.

What people describe, eventually, is holding both things at once — that the person was harmful, and that they are gone, and that both are true and neither cancels the other.

That is not closure in the tidy sense. It is generally what is available, and it turns out to be enough.

If grief is severe, persistent, or accompanied by thoughts of self-harm, seek support from a doctor or a bereavement service. Trauma-informed therapy is available and appropriate for grief following abuse.