The Real Housewives of Potomac star Ashley Darby revealed 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 had taken place that day.
As Ashley has documented on RHOP over the past nine seasons, she was raised solely by her mother, Sheila Matthews, and didn’t know her dad, who she said abandoned her at age 1. She tried to make contact with him during a season 4 episode, but he refused to meet with her.
“Last week, while I was in New York … my mom informed me my father had passed away,” Ashley said in the first of four videos posted Sunday.
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“Today was his funeral, and I contemplated 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,” said Ashley, who shares sons Dean, 6, and Dylan, 4, with ex-husband Michael Darby.
“My rationale was, why would I want to take time away from my own kids for someone who never made time for me?” Ashley continued. “I found out that I have siblings — all of the things I had no idea about my father, I learned about in his obituary. I learned he liked to garden, he taught himself how to play guitar, he was an avid fisherman — really, so many of the things that I also love to do.”
Ashley went on, “In the obituary, it said his greatest accomplishment was being a dad to his two sons. It stung a little bit. Whatever. It’s interesting how you can mourn and have some sort of grieving — a unique form of grieving — for someone you have no relationship with, right? Just blood relations, but no emotional connection. That is so interesting.”
The RHOP OG said she had hoped her father might reach out before his death. She said she had learned that he was recently placed in hospice care for cancer, which she said had spread through his whole body.
“I guess what I ultimately surmise from this experience of my life, at 37, is really learning to close the door,” she said. “A door that was never opened and will never be opened. I think I’ve always held out some sort of hope that maybe, like, when my dad was in hospice, prior to him passing, maybe he’d have a wave conscience to be like, ‘Let me at least make amends.’ It’s just so weird.”
“I really can’t understand how any human being doesn’t want to love their children or can’t love a child. It is what it is. And life will certainly go on,” Ashley said.
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In a subsequent video, Ashley said that before she and her mother got the news of her father’s death, she had a strange incident at her house.
“You guys know I’m very superstitious. The day that I was leaving 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 kind of creeped me out.”
