Ask Amy: A father’s memories don’t admit flaws
Dear Amy: My father has realized his memory is failing and is using this to whitewash his questionable parenting skills.
Now I have no closure or recourse on events like his racist outburst of 2012 that led me to a very awkward Thanksgiving in a house full of people I did not know.
My dad will even see if his partner remembers an incident, and if she doesn’t remember, then it definitely didn’t happen; but she is apt to ignore it like it didn’t happen just to move off the subject.
I don’t need an apology (not that it would come), but it is just a new insult on top of an old one.
It makes me resentful when he literally says I must be wrong because:
1. Both of them don’t remember.
2. One of them doesn’t remember.
or
3. Both remember, but act like they don’t.
My past has been check-mated by insecure septuagenarians. There is nothing I can do, is there?
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