Trauma Dumping
One of my grandfathers only called me with super-negative information. He’d tell me things like he put one of the cats down, with details on how the cat acted on the way to the vet. He let me know on my 21st birthday that I was an old maid. That one was just after my grandmother, his wife, had passed a few months prior.
When my parents’ house was broken into, he didn’t even tell me. I only found out when we arrived home to see yellow tape outside my bedroom window. When my father passed, he decided my mom and I didn’t need any sympathy calls or anything. Because it “might upset us more.” I had more sympathy from perfect strangers.
He did call me after my father passed to let me know that my father never loved me—which was a crock, as anyone who knew my father knew how close we were. He passed in the hospital last year, and I had to miss the funeral. I couldn’t have shed a tear anyway. Meanwhile, many of the locals think he was great—they only saw his public persona.