Long story short: My dad's parents (Nonny/Papa) were my rocks through my young childhood due to a pretty unbalanced mother and my dad who traveled a lot for work. When I was 10-ish Papa (through his own mismanagement) forced his company into bankruptcy and Nonny/Papa lost their house AND got a divorce. On top of all of that Papa had a new woman waiting for him in Missouri and he moved down there and married her.
I tried to visit once, but the new wife made funny of Nonny (said she had buck teeth, and other random insecure stuff) and the new wife also went on and on about how her family was so smart/successful/amazing in general and directly comparing my family/me to them. I was probably 12-13. The awkwardness/distance/sports kept me from really going back any other summer and consequently Papa missed a ton of high school stuff/graduation/college stuff/sorority stuff/college graduation ect. That whole time he was invited, through my dad, and didn't show up and I was always dissapointed.
My little sis just had her grandpa die and it made me realize that it would mean a lot to me if my Papa came to my wedding...if nothing else just to see him and him see how I grew up ect. I wrote him a letter and put it in his invitation that said how much I've always missed him, gave him my phone #, email and told him to call me/email me any time blah blah blah
I got his response card Friday and it said that I have "forgotten him for 10 years", he wouldn't want to come and cause problems blah blah and he gave me his email address.
I really want to email him and let him know that him being the adult, he could have tried to be apart of my life and that if I could forgive my mom, I can forgive him. That it's never too late to start mending the relationship we had (which we were REALLY close) But that he was an adult and should handle situations as an adult and not run away and hide.
Is this bad? I want to take the higher road here, but I am SO hurt that he is choosing not to come because he is saying that I have forgotten him for 10 years...when I was a child technically for 5 of those years. He could have made an effort to come up, I've never moved far from where we've always lived.