Hi everyone,
I just wanted to put in a few good words for my dad, who I found out last week has a terminal illness.
My dad is not my biological father. My dad is my stepdad. He isn't an educated man, like my biological father is--he barely graduated high school. He isn't a well-off professional, like my biological father is--he's a prison guard, and we were sometimes desperately poor growing up. Honestly, my dad is just a regular guy, an ordinary guy, representative of millions of other blue-collar men like him.
However. My dad took me, a kid not his own, unhesitatingly into his heart. He raised me like his own and treated me like his own and was better to me than my own mother was sometimes, and certainly far better to me than my biological father was. He is responsible for a great deal of my emotional and mental health as an adult. Not because he did anything spectacular--all he ever did was just be himself, and teach me unconsciously that men are good, men are kind, men are unselfish and men truly can love and cherish their daughters as daughters, even when their daughter is another man's biological progeny.
I just wanted to post about my dad. The world is going to be a much, much poorer place when he is no longer in it. To anyone else who has ever lost a dad, my heart goes out to you. To those of you who still have a dad, whether he's in good health or bad, who was a good dad to you, call him up today and let him know how much you love and appreciate him and how much he's done for your life. Because you never know if he'll still be there tomorrow to get that phone call.
Lisa