Letting Go

How long have you two been fighting?

It’s not a fight. We no longer speak.

How long ago did you stop speaking?

I can’t even remember now. It was so long ago. It’s been over fifteen years, and I know this because she has never met my two youngest daughters. They are fifteen and nine. But it happened before that.

What “happened”?

She had to move in with me because she had nowhere to go. She came to visit and spend the summer with me and my oldest daughter. I knew she had hit a tough stretch—self-inflicted. She was addicted to gambling. Slots. She was kicked out of her place in Florida and told me that two of her friends in California had given her a place to stay. So when she came to Texas, she was flying in from California. The day before she was supposed to fly back, she told me she had nowhere to go once her plane landed. Her friends were not welcoming her back.

When was she diagnosed with cancer?

The first time? I don’t remember that either. She and my oldest daughter stayed close. My daughter would tell me about diagnoses or treatments she was doing, but she would always preface it with, “She doesn’t want me to tell you, but I think you should know.”

Why do you think that was the case?

No idea. Maybe she didn’t want me reaching out out of pity.

Did you reach out?

No. I would sometimes ask my daughter for updates on her health, but that was all.

So you wanted to know how she was?

Every once in a while, yeah. Growing up, I lived with her and spent every other weekend with my dad. Once I was old enough, she was never around. She left me home alone the whole summer when I was sixteen. At that age, I loved the freedom. I could basically do whatever I wanted. But it also led me into situations that would affect me for the rest of my life. When I decided not to move out to go to college, she told me, “If you’re not moving out, then I am.” She left. I stayed in the two-bedroom townhouse my grandfather had paid off, and she moved out of state—nine hours away by car. We seemed to be closer after we didn’t live together anymore. When she had nowhere to go, I thought it was my responsibility to let her stay with me. I had an empty room. I had just gone through a divorce. It was just me and my oldest daughter living together.

How long did that last?

Two years. I told her she was not going to live with me forever. She would find jobs and then lose them. I found myself not wanting to be home and would go golfing and drinking on weekends while she and my daughter stayed home. I couldn’t parent my daughter anymore because she would intervene and try to parent me when I was disciplining my daughter. It was miserable.

Under what terms did she leave?

She got a job that she kept for a while. I told her that now that she had steady income, she needed to find her own place. She could keep using the second vehicle I had until she could afford her own. She found a place and moved out. She said she would make the payments on the vehicle she was using and appreciated me letting her use it. She moved forty minutes away. My daughter was devastated. I felt a huge weight lifted off my shoulders.

How long did she have the vehicle after she moved out?

Three months—and she never made a payment. I told her I was picking it up. She went and got herself a car. That was the last time I saw her.

Is she still battling cancer?

Yes.

Do you know how long she has?

Not really. The last thing my daughter told my wife was that the cancer had moved to her bones and she might have twelve to twenty-four months. There have been short deadlines before, but they’ve come and gone, so I don’t know what I believe.

So what do you want to do, if anything?

I want to have a good relationship with my children once they are adults, and I started questioning whether that was possible while not having a relationship with my mother.

Why do you think you might not have a good relationship with them when they are adults?

To be fair, three of the five already are. My oldest two—I was not around when they were growing up. Part of those life choices I made when I was a teenager. We reconciled when they were in their mid-to-late twenties. My oldest daughter, who I raised primarily by myself, resented me for many things. Some I deserve. I drank a lot. I don’t now. But the relationship with her is extremely flammable. My fifteen-year-old lives with her mother in another state, and since she turned fourteen, I rarely get to see her. We FaceTime, but that’s about it. She no longer wants to come visit, and when we go up there, she doesn’t like being away from her mother for too long. That’s a whole story in itself. Then there’s my youngest. She’s nine. I find myself looking at her and thinking, “I don’t ever want to feel the way I do about your oldest sister with you.”

Tell me about the oldest two.

The boys. The oldest is in the Coast Guard. I’m very proud of him. He was born three months after I turned eighteen. I was around until he was two. Then his mother found out I had gotten someone else pregnant and stopped me from seeing him. That pregnancy was my second oldest. His mother said she had left her longtime boyfriend, but that wasn’t the case. She was eight years older than me. I was twenty. Her boyfriend reached out and said he would raise the child as his own, but I was to stay away. I agreed. His mom told him the truth when he was in high school. He reached out several years later on Facebook. We’ve gotten very close. He calls me by my first name, but I hope one day he won’t.

Considering what you’ve told me, those seem positive.

They are. I carried so much guilt for so long that I hadn’t done enough for them. They both gave me a chance to share my side of the story and compare it to what their mothers had told them. Neither of their mothers knows that we’ve become close.

You said your relationship with your oldest daughter is “flammable.”

Yes. Her mother left when she was six months old. I raised her—really, by myself. She would spend summers with her grandmother when she was older, but she spent the most time with me. She wasn’t going back and forth to another parent like my youngest is. It was her and me, one hundred percent.

What happened between the two of you?

Neither of us being able to move forward without letting go of things we had done in the past.

Could you say the same about you and your mother?

When you put it that way, I suppose.

Do you and your oldest daughter still fight?

Not really. She’s an adult. I don’t agree with choices she makes, so I distance myself.

If she reached out, would you turn her away?

No.

If your mother did, would you turn her away?

Not now.

Does she know that?