My Daddy

I have blogged a lot about my mother but I don’t say much about my daddy. Maybe because it’s still painful on some level. He was my first love. I mean I bonded with him like most babies bond with their mothers. I was a daddy’s girl right out of the wound.

Shortly after I was born my daddy fell off a building in Nashville. He broke his back and was never the same physically. He quickly became unemployed and mom became the breadwinner. My memory doesn’t take me back that far or to infancy but my first memory of being home before I started school was with my daddy.

He raised me until my parents divorced. I was 9 years old when they divorced. I spent almost a decade with my first love. I was his only child and it was obvious that I could do no wrong. Even when I did wrong he just shook his head. I only got in real trouble once due to I left the dog on her leash and she ran off and got tangled up in the woods. I was only about 4 or 5 years old but I remember how stern he was with me and that switch he cut off the tree that he tapped so lightly.

My memories of being with him range from going to flea markets, granny’s house every morning to eat breakfast, visiting his brother who trained horses, riding in the back of his pickup truck with my cousin drinking Yoo Hoo’s, trick or treating with him, going to carnivals, and so many more fun times.

I believe it’s why a part of me died twice. I died when that green Chevy pickup truck backed up to the front door of our home and he started loading furniture on it. I remember the fighting between him and my mother. I was about 8 years old. It was the day my mother left him. I can still see it so vividly as I looked in the doorway from the living room and was thinking I don’t know where she is going but I’m not going. Within hours later I was ripped from my daddy. I cried every day for almost a year.

I died again in 1999 when he passed. It was the first worst day of my life. It’s been almost 24 years since he left me for good but those memories never fade. I will hold the love in my heart forever. Here’s to healing my heart on Father’s Day. The first man who was my world and changed my world forever, my daddy.