Why RHOP’s Ashley Darby skipped her estranged father’s funeral
The Real Housewives of Potomac‘S Ashley Darby revealed that her estranged father has died.
The reality star, 37, shared the news in a series of videos posted to her Instagram stories on Sunday, October 12, explaining why she chose not to attend his funeral, which took place on Sunday.
As Ashley has documented RHOP for the past nine seasons she has been raised solely by her mother, Sheila Matthewsand did not know her father, who she said abandoned her at age 1. She tried to contact him during a season 4 episodebut he refused to meet her.
“Last week while I was in New York… my mom told me my dad passed away,” Ashley said in the first of four videos posted Sunday.
“Today was his funeral and I was considering going, almost to have my own sense of closure, but I’ve been traveling so much and I really wanted to be with my own kids this weekend,” says Ashley, who shares sons Dean, 6, and Dylan, 4, with ex-husband Michael Darby.
“My reasoning was, why would I want to take time away from my own children for someone who never made time for me?” Ashley continued. “I found out I have brothers and sisters. All the things I had no idea about my father, I learned from his obituary. I learned he loved gardening, he taught himself to play guitar, he was an avid fisherman – actually, so many things I like to do too.”
Ashley continued, “The obituary said that his greatest achievement was being a father to his two sons. It stung a little bit. Whatever. It’s interesting how you can grieve and have a kind of grief – a unique kind of grief – for someone you have no relationship with, right? Just blood relationship, but no emotional connection. That’s so interesting.”
The RHOP She originally said she had hoped her father would reach out before his death. She said she learned he had recently been placed in hospice care due to cancer, which she said had spread throughout his body.
“I think what I ultimately suspect based on this experience in my life, at age 37, is really learning to close the door,” she said. “A door that has never been opened and will never be opened. I think I’ve always had some kind of hope that, for example, when my father was in hospice, before he passed away, maybe he would have a shaky conscience and say, ‘Let me at least make it up to you.’ It’s just so weird.”
“I really can’t understand how any human being wouldn’t want to love their children, or couldn’t love a child. It is what it is. And life will certainly go on,” Ashley said.
In a subsequent video, Ashley said that before she and her mother received the news of her father’s death, she had a strange incident at her home.
“You know I’m very superstitious. The day I left to go to New York, these black crows were circling my house, and they were all in my yard,” she said. “I took pictures of it because it scared me a little.”
