[margo]

Hi all - my dad gets into town tonight for a week's visit. He is not staying with me, but close by. I am the only relative in this town so he will be spending the majority of his time with me. Just to give a little history, I lost a brother to suicide in May of this year and my stepmom to cancer in August (so obviously, my dad lost a son and his wife). My dad does not do the "stiff upper lip" thing and does cry about these losses when moved to do so, which is fine. The thing is, though - he always wants to talk about how tragic everything is and although it may not sound right, this drives me batty. I don't want to talk about tragedy all the time, even though there has been plenty of it in my family in the past, yet I don't know how to express this to him as I don't want to hurt his feelings. He is also a very negative person in many ways and does a lot of badmouthing of some of my siblings and my mother, who he has been divorced from for 28 years. As I am just shy of 90 days clean, I'm dreading this visit in many ways as my emotions seem to be all over the place lately. I have always been so codepenent with my father and I am fearing that all that I have learned will go flying right out the window when he gets here. Needless to say this is causing me a lot of stress. Any ideas about how to get through this next week without losing my mind?