in my own opinion, the marriage was over before i was ever born.. but none the less i was here, the photos and memories of bike rides with babies on the back were long gone, left only in photographs for my sister to say *look its me on the back of the bike* but than again i dont recall many photos of me as a baby only a handful of them in existence anymore..
dad and i have always had a strained relationship, not sure if there is one point that i can pin as the reason why but it was what it was..
as a young girl i feared him, scared of setting him off in any way, i was always quiet and kept to myself when around him, always minding my P's and Q's never to hear him raise his voice.. dunno if i have a reason to be that way or if it was just me living off a fear my mother had.
sure dad had a temper and dad was an alcoholic and yes we had seen his temper flare up but was it ever a reason to be the house mouse?
they divorced when i was still quite young and while we moved on with mother, dad went on to move into a house full of guys and became the weekend dad.. while his visitation was every other weekend from friday-sunday.. dad would show up one day every other weekend, normally a saturday and that was it. he would take us to do fun things .. a trip to the zoo, a walk on some trails, out to dinner, whatever.. he tried in his own way.
it wasnt long before our conditions had gotten gravely bad living with mother, we found ourselves living in a half burnt building and us girls starving to death.. believe it or not, the burnt building was a step up from the previous place we lived, in the back of the pickup truck a place we called home for 2 days!
i couldnt even begin to tell you how dad ended up in the slot of full time parent, everything happened so quickly.. we went to stay the night at our mor-mors house after she found us and the next thing i remember was being in the back of dads VW Bus and him asking me what was wrong.. me saying *nothing* and he said *dont worry your never going back there again*
we went to the hospital and had blood drawn and found out the fate that we would have met had we not been saved at that time.. we were given a week with a common cold and we would have been dead had we not been saved. i will never understand the choices my parents made but i suppose its not for me to understand.
living with dad was more like living with a room mate, he did his thing, we did ours.. we were the ones responsible for the house hold chores and what not.. we were given an allowance which my sister would beat me for mine if i didnt just hand it over to her, this was to buy all the things we needed.. and since i was never allowed to spend my money on what i needed i was never *in style* at school in any form of the way.. i wore a lot of hand me downs etc.. even gifts from relatives were yanked away from me by her so that she could *have it all* dad wore a blind eye to it all..
years later we were reconnected with mother again and chose to live with her.. my sister didnt last long and was quickly swooped off to a psych ward of a hospital for a month stay (the longest one that dads insurance would pay for) and once her stay was over while i was left in my own personal hell, she went on to live with dad.
dad came to see me once in 8th grade.. not to save me from my hell that i called home but instead to just tell me to have mother call him.. the weekend visits were no more, he never called, never tried to see me, he was just *gone*
i saw him again a few times after my sister came back to live with us.. but not often, he would make arrangements to come get the both of us .. although i know i was only included as an obligation type deal..
when i got married i didnt feel that dad deserved any rights to know, no rights to know that i was pregnant with my first.. he didnt treat me like a daughter and i wasnt about to treat him like a father..
mother is the one that broke the news to him threw a letter that i was married and pregnant.. i wasnt thrilled but i guess she felt an obligation to tell him who knows.
when my oldest was 7 months old dad made his one trip to see us in NC, of course he stayed with my sister and her family and spent a week with him but i got to see him for one day and than a short hour visit after that.. but that was it, after all i wasnt the one he was interested in spending time with. i suppose the only reason why he came to the house was because Ron and i had decided it would be nice to have a cook out..
dad would call from time to time after that but only to locate my sister and to beg me not to let mother marry her than boyfriend..
when the phone rang on that feb. night, i would have never guessed that it was my sister to tell me dad was gone..
my father as we learned had lost his job and been unemployed for a year, he was drinking heavily and apparently passed out in an empty lot behind a junk yard.. a trail he liked to walk cut threw the area from what i understand.. the police report is sketchy with so much of it blocked out, my grandfather talked to the owner of the junk yard so we know that he had found dad and woken him up, gotten him on his feet and so he thought, on his way.. but dad just laid back down.. passed out in the snow ..
the owner came back to check on his property and that is when he found dad.. rescue was called and they tried to revive him but he was gone .. dead on arrival.. the autopsy came back he died of alcohol intoxication.
dad was just 1 month to the day past his 48th birthday.. the funeral was a blur.. i went, i had to go.. but i never expected it would be so hard, the people, friends of dads, drunks like him, telling me how much he loved me and how proud he was of me.. seeing photos of me and knowing who i was..
why could he never say it himself when he was alive? why couldnt he once make me feel like i belonged?
the truth is.. life would have been easier if he would have never been around.. its better to accept that, than to be a yo-yo that wasnt wanted.
what i have left of him is a wallet, half of what was in it, and one set of keys.. this i have to pass on to my children of the grandfather none of them have ever or will ever know..
