My sad little story...

My mom threw my Dad out when I was a toddler. At the time he had three other kids from a prior marriage; they didn't live with us. I know what it sounds like but he wasn't a bad man, just not good at relationships at the time. I'd only get to see him a couple times a year because he moved away for work but in my mid teens those visits stopped... It was approximately around this time that his 5th kid (I'm #4) passed away in a house fire trying to save her mother... I buried that deep inside myself for decades, I never even met her and then she was gone and very young at that... This might have been why we lost touch for a while, the trauma of it all, I don't know. When I hit my early 20's he reconnected and wanted me to come visit him and wanted me to forge a relationship with the three other siblings I never knew. I couldn't bring myself to do it at the time. I had a mini crisis and opted to ignore him completely. I felt better instantly.

Fast forward to yesterday. It's been at least 15 years since I talked to him. He gave up trying to get me to reach out a few years ago; he'd send me Xmas cards with his number asking me to call and I never would. Well something caused me to remember the sister I never knew; I now have a very happy, healthy little girl of my own close in age. It was though picking at the mental wound that I realized that either a.) I didn't know my sister's name ever or b.) I repressed it and now couldn't remember her name because of the trauma. In any regard I didn't know her name and it began to drive me crazy with guilt and sorrow. I went into a little crisis over it. It impacted me so much that I sneaked out to the garage with one of those old Xmas cards from my Dad and dialed the number... He was incredibly happy to hear from me. We talked for a long time and he told me about what my siblings were doing and about their kids (my god, I'm an uncle five times over). He then asked about my family because he'd been doing his best to acquire any info he could on me and knew I had one. I told him about my daughter and it was then that my sister came up... He said my daughter sounded a lot like her. He told me he went through hell when she died, it was really bad for a long time. It was then I got her name and he told me more details about how she died and what a little hero she was to go back for her mom...... We ended the call very quickly after that but long story short we're going to have a relationship now. I'm almost 40 and he's in his mid 70's. It's never too late to reconnect, that's the lesson of my story. Mend things before you run out of time. Do it for your own good in the very least.

I came on here to get this out of me because I have had a hard time functioning today. I almost called in sick. I feel a little better now.