We went to a friend’s funeral yesterday. We’d known him for around 12 years and he was 69 years old. He’d had cancer and finally lost his battle and went home to be with our Lord.

Whilst I knew this man reasonably well he wasn’t a close friend and I didn’t expect the funeral to reduce me to tears but it did. To watch the way his family lovingly told his story, and for his grandchildren to get up, talking and sobbing, about their beloved Pa, I began to grieve in a way that hadn’t yet taken place through our experiences over the past few months.

My husband and I had briefly talked about what would happen when my father dies. We know that it could be soon, or he might still be around for a few years. He is weak and with each winter he gets worse. Hubby has already told me he won’t be going to the funeral but I’m very torn with having to make a decision. I don’t want to be there but feel I should for my mother’s sake. But I dread hearing people talking about my dad in a way that is no longer real to us anymore and I know I will feel like a fraud being there.

I spoke with my former pastor yesterday after the funeral. He’d not known of the events of the past few months and I felt it important he knew the rest of the story – it had been unfinished during the time we were at his church. And to share how I had had to contact my siblings to tell them, in case their children had been affected too, and the rippling effect of something like this and how it reaches out to others was an enlightening thing for him. I could tell, just by the widening of his eyes at each new portion I added in my telling our story, that he hadn’t come across this before and hadn’t realised just how far reaching child sexual abuse can be. It’s not just the children that are affected, but the parents, other siblings, other relatives and close friends of the family. The offender has no idea just what far-reaching consequences there can be when they do something to a child that should never be done.

Of course, I am assuming that it won’t have gone public what dad has done before he dies. If it does, and he gets formally charged, then his funeral will be a completely different thing altogether and I expect there might not be many people there at all. And what will that do to mum? Dad has no idea how what he’s done has and will affect my mum in a big way too. In some ways, it would be much kinder for her to pass on before he does. A sad thing really – for him to do something that gratified a need or feeling at the time and it ends up affecting his life and his death, not to mention where he could end up eternally. How I pray my father will come to know the Lord before his life ends on this earth.

offender, child abuse, non-offender, sexual abuse