J.Rhett Lively

On September 11, 2025, just before dinner time, I became an orphan at 45 years old.  My mother passed away in 2006 after fighting through kidney failure and multiple heart attacks for years and a week ago, as I’m writing this, my father passed away after a short battle with multi-systems cancer.

And try as I might to find something about this situation to be heart-broken about, to shed tears over, the truth is I’m not heart-broken, I’m not sad enough to need to shed tears.  If I’m honest, which there’s no need not to be, I’m relieved to be free of from those relationships!

Especially during the last two decades after my mother’s death, I’ve come to realize how much they manipulated and controlled me over the years. I realized after moving to live on my own, in my own city, doing what I choose to do, that my desires and dreams for life don’t line up with what my parents had expected of me.

I became something different than they expected me to become, and in many ways those choices to be something else wound up being the wedge that divided my branch from the family tree’s long and deep-rooted history. I became the outcast, the black sheep that many would just as soon forget.

And that was evident at the funeral. While family and friends were visiting, when I attempted to engage many of them I was met with strange looks, awkward conversations, and fake attempts at caring statements. Though I’ll admit that I, myself, had to fake many of the emotions that were expected by the people at the funeral services throughout the week.

When there hasn’t been a relationship for many years, it’s hard to act like I’m truly heartbroken by the loss of a father today.  I mourned the loss of that relationship many years ago so today it is simply everyone else catching up to what I experienced in life over a decade ago.

The hardest part, if I’m honest with everyone reading, was sitting through the funeral and hearing the words spoken about him.  While I’m sure many of those words were true, somewhere with someone in his life, the person I knew was nothing like what was spoken.  That loving, caring, deeply spiritual man I heard about this week, was anything but that in my life. That man of deep spiritual beliefs and devout service far too often left our home that should have been his main focus as the last thing that was cared for, mentored, and at times even loved. That man that everyone celebrated and fawned over this week, simply was a different man in the privacy of the home I grew up in.

It’s the realization that I had those years ago that actually made this week hard.  Knowing what was expected of me, but also knowing that anything less that how I truly felt would have been a lie.  So when people tried to talk to me, when people tried to hug me until I cried, I simply let them have their moment and moved on. For a few that brought questions about why I was holding it in, comments about needing grief therapy, and looks from people who were judging me for not grieving enough. 

What those people, who have not been welcome in my life for years anyway, didn’t realize, won’t realize because they refuse to get to know me at all is that I grieved over loosing my father so long ago that I’ve moved beyond grief, beyond anger, beyond all the emotions of this time while he was alive. I’ve moved so far beyond these feelings that in all honesty the feeling I have now is relief because I don’t have to fight these battles and fake feelings anymore.  Relief that, because he’s gone, I don’t have to deal with holiday chaos, family reunions, and off color jokes in texts.  Relief that now when I scroll to the letter of his name, there’s no fear of accidentally dialing his number and having to come up with something to talk about.

He’s gone, he’s no longer here, and I am free to be the person I’ve longed to be for forty-five years, or at the very least the last twenty years where I’ve found that I’m not what he expected, wanted, or desired me to be.  I can finally be the person I’ve longed to be since I found the ability to make those decisions for myself.

So, yes, I’m officially an orphan. I’m officially free of the bondage that was supposed to be a family of love, encouragement and grace.  I’m free to become something that isn’t judged by those who’ve given their DNA to make me in the first place.