What
@arfie said. To profound depths.
When my dad's mom died, I watched him and his three siblings go through absolute chaos. She was extremely abusive to everyone and anyone. I thought when she died, they would all be able to breathe again. Turns out they needed to process that death of hope as well, grieve the complexities of having loved a parent in all the insane ways a child is wired to love an abusive parent regardless, and also hate them at the same time. She died after multiple cancers, decades after she was told she was gonna die, decades after the kids wished her dead. They would often say how relieving it would be for her to just hurry up and die already. After her death, I was asked to move into her house to renovate it and clean it as none of the kids could even walk through the door yet.
After the funeral, all the kids were supposed to come to the house and walk through, collect whatever thing(s) they wanted, and help me finish emptying the place and do a final clean. My dad walked in and
instantly put his back out and spent the weekend moaning on the couch asking everyone to bring him things. His sister walked in, stomped upstairs in her violent, fierce fashion, stomped downstairs, her face set, took one bowl from the kitchen and immediately left. She never came back. The one brother had stolen everything of value from the house already, so he only poked his head in for half a second, said, "Well, I've already done it all, you guys got the rest" and left. He later took the estate to court for a ridiculous reason and sum, the judge laughed and threw it out. The last sister came in, willing her cells around the house, just weak and wounded. She didn't take anything either, she just sobbed, like she was melting into her childhood. She stayed until the tears became too much, looked at me and choked out, "I can't do this. Thank you," and she never came back either.
She said later that they never would have been able to do it, none of them. Much later I came across articles on narcissism and gently sent her one, saying all I read was her mom. She told me months later that it was the worst and best article she'd ever read - it threw her into years of therapy but she was finally able to come to terms with the fact that her mom was abusive and this was extremely complicated.
About a decade before my dad's mom died, her husband died (if anybody ever drove someone to their early death, she did). We buried him. About a year later she remembered he had two gold teeth. She had him interred and had someone extract the gold teeth. The siblings had been furious, so that day when they all were at the house, I made myself pretty scarce so they could talk or process or cry or whatever, and suddenly I heard this laughter and yelling. I went to the balcony and saw the two sisters absolutely cackling with glee, jumping up and down and screaming "f*ck you Mom"! They had launched their dad's golden teeth off the balcony into the abyss, where their mom would never find it, a loss she would never be able to recover.
So let your kids grieve in their own ways. Ask them how they want to honor him and the good memories, cuz those matter. And ask them how they want to extract justice and burn the evil to dust - cuz that matters. And obviously you as well - whatever is there, honor it. Follow your instincts individually and collectively and let go however that looks like for you.
It's fking complicated.
