My father might have days to live

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Things that make me sad about this:

That he never got to go home again.

That just a few days before his death, there was talk about him being able to go home for a while.

That not long before his death, his prognosis had been briefly changed to "6 months to 2 years", and my mother had her hopes up.

That he and the dog never got to see each other again.

Reconciling contradictions:

So this has been on my mind for a couple of days now.
One of his Facebook friends referred to him as "a gentle soul". And this is true. It's also true that many times I saw him unsure, confused and vulnerable. It's true that he was hurt over his estrangement from the older of my younger brothers, and that he asked after him every time he saw me. It's true that he showed off about me to all of his friends.

However, it's also true that I was subjected to years of emotional and verbal abuse by him. Here's a couple of examples:

Point 2 here: http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt156246.html (note that this went on for weeks on end between around 4 and 7am, and ended up giving me what I'm almost certain are seizures and which still continue now).

http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt157295.html

And there's a bunch of stuff in the unsent letters thread by me in response to constantly being told that I was lazy, being difficult on purpose, and worse.

I am confused.

Generally, you'll feel for people how they've made you feel. Being confused would point to how he often made you feel bad and that you're seeing the good things too (albeit the things others have said in your list, and also how he made your mother happy and all that, such as the circumstances of it all). Enter confusion.

How you feel for someone who's dead is just an extension of how you feel for them when they're alive.

Positive people will say to focus on the good and all that, but I don't think we should hide from the bad people have done just because they've had something bad happen to them (and death isn't innately a "bad" thing).

Seeing both the good and bad is reality.

More bad, then the more bad you'll feel. And on and on and on through the various ways of how we feel based on how much either tilts the scales.

People have this tendency to praise even the devil if he were to die.

Give yourself time and don't be too hard on yourself.

My father died several years ago and I am not sure I've fully sorted everything out yet, to be honest. He was an abusive alcoholic/drug addict I hadn't had any sort of relationship with for many years before he died, so in some ways I'd mourned his loss long before he actually died. I felt horrible and, at times, judged for not grieving in the way people on the outside looking in expected me to grieve.

But, relationships are incredibly complex, everyone is different and there is no 'right' or 'wrong' way to grieve, as so long as you are being honest with yourself about your emotions and not beating yourself up.

My father may still be physically alive, but I've long considered him dead already.

Just like other abusive parents, he's not only able to convince outsiders he's a good loving man, he's also good at convincing people who know him well that they often have it wrong when they "misjudge" him (even though, in reality, they more likely have it spot on).

I watched my father die maybe 3 weeks ago.

I don't know how to handle it and I'm unable to think much about it. I miss him a lot though. He was a friendly old hippy who just wanted to watch his shows.

Sorry for your loss.

Sorry for your loss too, aequitus1.