First off, I don't need any consoling. I think I'm fine. If anything, please critique me.
My dad and I were estranged for a decade, before that he barely interacted with me except to scold me for something. I was terrified that, as some people say, the loss of an estranged parent would bring feelings of regret for lack of closure. But really, it's hard to feel much for someone who paid the bills and babysat with disinterest. I need some positive memories to actually miss somebody.
The one thing this has done has been to wake me up a bit. With climate catastrophe barrelling towards us, I've used my computer as an escape and I've neglected relationships. My phone always has unread messages. Fuck, I don't want to be my dad, watching TV and mildly annoyed by the kids, rarely stopped to scream at the top of his lungs to tell the kids to "shut up". Kids in my gf's family want to play Roblox and Minecraft, ugh fine. At least have some good memories of me.
My dad's not a bad person, he just profoundly indifferent to everything outside of TV and the middle class white people he tried to tie his identity too. My dad worked a trade, and I wish to fuck that he could be proud of being a prole. Decades of (likely) lead poisoning probably didn't help. After retirement he got some real pro-landlord beliefs, although thankfully he never went full chud. Maybe if his son wasn't bookish, fucking suck terribly at sport, didn't leave the Church, go lefty, go vegan, get a small flat in the city, give up TV at 16, maybe he'd show a bit of interest. Probably if I bought a 4 bedroom house somewhere and had kids, shit, he'd start to ask me how my day was.
Talk to the people in your life, especially the young. FFS, don't be my dad.
I’m in a somewhat similar boat. My dad isn’t dead but super disengaged, haven’t talked to him in decades. Like, a few years after my parents got divorced, I was like 9 and my brother was 6 or 7, my older, already adult sister admonished him for not calling us more often. His response was, they have my number. My older brother’s theory is he’s a (relatively) benevolent sociopath.
He stopped reaching out to me once I said I was fine seeing him but not his new wife (that’s a whole ‘nother story). I didn’t bother keeping up because, why would I put all this emotional labor into a relationship where the other person clearly doesn’t give a shit? What am I going to get out of it other than feeling alienated and unloved? If it was important to him, he’d bother to ask my sister, hey what’s PKMKII’s number?
So yeah, I totally get why you’re not feeling much grief over your dad passing. And yeah, I think everyone fears the possibility that they’re going to repeat the mistakes they saw their parents make. But hey, the fact that you’re recognizing that possibility is a good sign that you’ve got the self-awareness to see when you’re doing that and course correcting.