Why RHOP’s Ashley Darby Skipped Her Estranged Father’s Funeral

The Real Housewives of Potomac‘s Ashley Darby She revealed that her estranged father had died.

The 37-year-old reality TV star shared the news in a series of videos she posted to her Instagram Stories on Sunday, October 12, explaining why she chose not to attend his funeral, which was held on Sunday.

As Ashley documented RHOP For the past nine seasons, she has been raised solely by her mother, Sheila MatthewsShe did not know her father, who she said abandoned her at the age of one. She tried to contact him during one of the episodes of the fourth season, but he refused to meet her.

“Last week, while I was in New York… my mother informed me of my father’s death,” Ashley said in the first of four videos posted on Sunday.

“Today was his funeral and I thought about going, almost to get my own sense of closure, but I’ve been traveling a lot and I really wanted to be with my kids this weekend,” said Ashley, who shares sons Dean, 6, and Dylan, 4, with her ex-husband. Michael Darby.

“My rationale was: Why would I want to spend time away from my kids for someone who never made time for me?” Ashley continued. “I found out that I had siblings. All the things I had no idea about, I learned about in his obituary. I learned that he loved gardening, taught himself how to play the guitar, and was an avid fisherman — really, a lot of things he loved to do, too.”

Ashley continued: “In the obituary, he said his greatest accomplishment was being a father to his two boys. It was a little bit painful. Whatever. It’s interesting how you can mourn and have a kind of grief — a unique form of grief — for someone you’re not related to, right? Just blood relations, but no emotional connection. That’s very interesting.”

the RHOP The original said she was hoping her father would reach out before he died. 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 expect from this life experience, at 37 years old, is to really learn to close the door,” she said. “The door that has never been opened, and will never be opened. I think I’ve always held some kind of hope that, maybe, when my father was in a nursing home, before he died, maybe he had a looming conscience to say, ‘Let me at least make amends.’ It’s very strange.”

“I really can’t understand how anyone wouldn’t want to love their child, or couldn’t love a child,” Ashley said. “It is just how it is. And life will definitely go on.”

In a later video clip, Ashley said that before she and her mother got the news of her father’s death, she experienced a strange incident at her home.

“You guys know I’m very superstitious. The day I was leaving to go to New York, these black crows were flying around my house, and they were all in my yard,” she said. “I took pictures of it because it kind of scared me.”