Father Issues

                I saw a post today from a person I follow on word press about daddy issues. I commented to her about my story in hopes that it helps her make a decision with her own father. She wanted to know what if? What if he dies and she never gets the closure of saying goodbye or telling him she loves him? Well I am in that boat right now. I always asked myself what if but never did anything about it. I will start from the beginning. I was 11 years old when I saw something a child should never see, my father holding my mother up by her neck choking her and holding a gun to her head. I remember running down the stairs to call the police and that’s all I remember. At 33 I still have that part blocked in my memory. They divorced soon after and I stayed with my mom. At that time, I blocked out that incident, blocked out the type of man he was and I was angry at my mother for leaving him. As I grew up things started coming back to me about the type of man he was. He was an alcoholic, abuser, and just not a very nice person. When I was 16 he told me that I was a fat, useless piece of shit. He chose to move on and forget about me with his new readymade family.  He called my mom when I was 18 asking to speak to me but I was not there, he yelled at her for allowing me to go on vacation with my friends to Texas. We never heard a peep out of him after that. I was about to get married at 26 and I wanted to connect with his side of the family to invite them. I called his girlfriend to find out my aunts number, she started telling me that my father always thought about me, wondered if he ever passed me in a mall, remembered my birthday every year and he loved me so much. My questions to her were “Why hasn’t he called me”? "Where has he been the last 10 years"? My mom had the same number since I was 18. She didn’t comment. She did say that he would not approve of who I was marrying, a Mexican. Present day, Last month I found out from my mom that my father died in April of 2011. She didn’t get a call nor did I, She happened to think about him one night and goggled his name, That’s where she found his obituary. For 10 months my father was dead and nobody thought to contact us. I didn’t really know what I was feeling towards a dead man I haven’t heard from in 17 years. Anger, sadness, hurt, rage was what I was feeling a week later, when I finally read his obituary. Nowhere in it were me, my sister, nor my half-brother from his first marriage mentioned. His obit was a full blown lie, right down to him serving in the army. How does someone live with themselves for not notifying his family of his death? How does someone that is not legally anything to him have a right to cremate the body? I still haven’t got those answers. So if anyone out there is asking what if? My advice is to really think about that person, what if they are dead, would you have missed your time to say sorry, or tell them that you loved them? Do you have closure? Cause I don’t! I will never get my answers or my closure. I will never know why my father hated me so much. To make this a happy ending I did have a dad in my life. My mom met a wonderful man when I was 13 and married him when I was 18 that I called dad. He was everything a daddy should be. When we lost him in 2009 he knew that I loved him, He knew that he was my hero. I got my closure with him. Life is not a permanent thing; we can die at any moment. Get the closure you need now before it's too late.