I Want My Daddy!!!!!!

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A life long dream of mine was crushed this week. I had to let go of my dad and accept defeat after never even meeting him. What's worse than that, I have finally been forced to admit that I have longed for him all of my life. My dad left my family when I was two, my middle sister was four, and my older sister was five. He never came back never called, or even sent a letter. For a long while after he left, the three of us would run to get the mail as soon as it dropped, hoping for a letter from him. I was just following along, running for a stranger. I do not remember him at all. I have several pictures of him, so for me, he has always been a paper dad. One day, my sister stopped running for the mail and life went on without him. My mother was raising three little girls on her own in the Avalon Gardens Projects. Then at the age of ten, one month before my eleventh birthday, in 1980, we laid my mother to rest. She had died of breast cancer. Life for me was rough and a year after my mother passed away, the foster lady who had took us in, gave the three of us up and we were seprated for the first time. Fast forward to the year 1992, when my middle sister gve birth to triplets. She expressed how much she wanted to find daddy so the kids would know him. My older sister's remembered him, so we often discussed finding him. I told myself that I did not know him and did not care about finding him, but that I would do it for my sister's and their kids. I had always had this I do not care attitude about my dad leaving and not coming back, but the older I got, it became anger and deep resentment. I thought about how my life could have been different if he had stayed around and raised us. Then in 2003, a few months before my mother's youngest sister died of breast cancer, she was telling my older sister and I that my dad had Epilepsy. He had Grand Mal Seizures so bad that he was not able to drive. All of a sudden I started to feel a little compassion for him. The poor man had had a horrible disease that caused him and no doubt his family a lot of heartache. I started to feel a little guilty for having ill feeling toward him all those years. But that was still no excuse for not never coming back, especially, after they told him about my mother's death. What a selfish coward he was to me. But I continued to search for my daddy, just to make my sister's happy. Nothing and I do mean nothing could have prepared me for what I learned this week. Because my dad has a very common name and that is all we knew was his name, attempting to find him was like looking for a needle in a haystack. So earlier this week, I e-mailed a government agency with infomation about my mother, hoping they could us it to find my dad. They found him alright. Not only was he dead, but he had passed away in 1974, three years after he had left. I do not know what my daddy went through in those three years or even where he stayed, but that certainly explained why he had never returned, called, or written. My sister's and I are not even sure whether or not my mother knew of his passing. I was fit to be tied when I realized that I had to accept defeat and left go. Not only do I feel terribly guilty, but it forced me to finally admit to myself that I have longed desparately to meet my daddy all my life. I wanted him to hug me and kiss me and show me that he loved me and that I mattered to him. I know it is silly to love a stranger, but you only have one daddy and I really wanted to meet him.