If you handle things right, you will have your day to calmly let him know how his decisions affected you personally and the way it changed your life and those closest to him.
I understand what you are trying to say FHN, but I have done that. My father and I briefly had a friendly relationship when I was an adult. His idea of having a relationship is where he acts like we are buddies, we go to the movies, he comes over my house and eats my food. A very superficial relationship where we never talk about any of the painful issues that I am still dealing with from childhood. A relationship with him is one where he can simply say he is sorry about all that stuff in the past, not explain anything, not ask how it affected me and how he can help me work through it.
It was after I had a friendly relationship with him that cooled a bit for some reason, that my sister, mom and nephew had a crisis that left them homeless. By that time I was unable to reach my father by phone. This has often been his M.O.; in our childhood we often had no idea where he was living, or what his phone number was.
I did know what hall he went to. He went to the hall right across from me. A double hall where there were times our congregations met at the same times and he would pass me in the foyer and not even speak to me.
Anyway, since this was a family crisis, I went to his hall to plead with him to for once in his f-ing life to do the right thing. I approached him after the meeting, and he gave me that smile of his while he said there was nothing he could do to help. Which of course was a big lie. It has always been important to my father to appear to be a good guy, to be well liked by everyone other than his children.
I made a scene at the hall which got me the elders meeting with him, and believe me I poured my heart out about how his behaviour was affecting me. He and the elders didn't care at all.
Fast forward years later, I'm an inactive, but still believing JW. I am still dealing with the abandonment issues, but I am also still pretty pissed about how the organization never disciplined my father for his abandonment of his family. I still believed in the org, and felt that perhaps I had not given it the opportunity to set matters right. And so I wrote NY. I wrote a 5 page typed letter where I outlined how deeply I and my sister were hurt by his abandonment, and his continued lack of concern for our welfare despite him being a JW in good standing.
It was a difficult letter to write, and I was emotionally wrung out by the time I finished. I sent that letter 3 years ago March and have yet to receive a response from the Society BTW.
I did meet with a couple of the elders and my father regarding my letter. Please understand that all interactions I've have with my father and the elders were initiated by me. I went to his hall a few weeks after writing the letter to ask if they had received it, which they did. Even all those years later, my father was still being a bastard. He actually said in the back room that I could have called him. Because of course it is about him, why didn't I try to contact him? The nerve! What I put in the letter, and explained to him and the brothers face to face is that, if I am ever to have a relationship with my father it can only be on my terms. If he is not willing to hear about how he failed, and what he needs to do to get right with me, then we cannot have a relationship. Period.
I'm through being jerked around by him. He and my sister have a relationship. They talk everyday. I'm glad for her. I put in the letter that he can show his repentence to me by being there for my sister and nephew. I'm glad he is in my sister's life. But I cannot have a relationship with him unless I know that it is going to be positive.
