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My father abandoned my mother and I when I was no more than 4 years old. I was too young to understand but I was old enough to remember that he left. I used to ask about him all the time asking my mother “where did daddy go?” “Will he be back soon?”. He left our lives without a single word and with no way to contact him. So my mother and stepfather raised me and I began to accept my stepfather as my father figure even though that never kept me from wondering where my “daddy” had gone. Each year the night before my birthday I would stay up half the night praying that maybe he would remember and call or maybe just maybe a package would come in the mail for me. When it came time to blow out the candles and make a wish, it was always the same; I wanted my daddy to come back home. Year after year passed and I started to grow up, but the thought of him never left my mind. Fast forward now to the night before my 10th birthday. My routine was the same as since I was a child, I prayed and prayed until I fell asleep. The next morning I walk into my mother’s bedroom and she was on the phone crying. I was very concerned so I walked up to her. Interrupting her I asked: “Mom? Is everything okay?”. She handed me the phone and said “Sweetheart, it’s for you”. I put the phone to my ear and said, “Hello?”. It was that moment where I heard a voice that was faintly familiar to me from the other end of the phone. The stranger replied, “Happy birthday son, it’s your daddy!”. I began to cry. I felt as if all those years of praying had finally paid off. I was at a loss for words and there was a good ten seconds of silence before my father said, “How have you been son? It’s been awhile.”. So me and my father talked on the phone for about half an hour, with me feeling like a little kid on Christmas morning where everything was perfect and nothing could possibly go wrong. It was then my father started crying on the phone. My father then told me that he was diagnosed with stage four terminal cancer in the esophagus and he was given a year to live. With tears rolling down my face I dropped the phone and ran to my bedroom and hid underneath my blankets, crying, trying to understand why this was happening, why everything could go right only to go so wrong so fast. I didn’t say goodbye to my father, I guess my mother continued to talk to him until about ten minutes later she came into my room, lifted up my blanket, and then wrapped me in a tight hug telling me “I love you Alex”. I became severely depressed at such a young age, I kept to myself at school and at home, never talking more than to ask for the necessities such as food. My mom became deeply worried about me. A couple years passed and me and my father talked on the phone a couple times a month and it was the strangest feeling in the world. I felt like I was talking to a stranger, yet I knew I was talking to the man that held me in his arms when I was just a newborn. Fast forward a couple years later, now I am 14 years old. I was sitting on my bed working on homework when my mother walked into my room and sat down on my bed. My mom then told me “pack your bags, we are going to see your father”. I was shocked and didn’t really feel anything at that moment but I packed up my bags and in the morning we got on a flight to visit Baraboo, Wisconsin to see my father. It was a long flight and all I could think about was what I was going to say to my father when I saw him. I mean hell, I hadn’t seen my father since I was four years old. When we finally arrived in Wisconsin I told my mother that I was scared to meet him and I didn’t know what to say or how to act around him. After I told my mother this, she knelt down and asked me to pray with her. My mother and I prayed that everything would go great and that me and my father would be able to reconnect after all these years. We got in the car and drove to his house. When we pulled up I saw my father standing in the driveway and I began to cry. Looking at my father was like looking at a walking skeleton. He was so skinny and so pale it looked like he would expire any minute. We got out of the car and he greeted me saying “Heya son how’re you?”. I walked up to him and gave him the gentlest hug I could thinking that I could accidently hurt him if I hugged him too hard. He welcomed us inside and we moved our things in. It was pretty late when we arrived so we went straight to bed. I couldn’t sleep that night all I could think about was what was I going to say to him. Eventually I fell asleep after thinking myself to exhaustion. The next morning my mother, my father, and I, all went fishing. We talked about what had been going on since he left and just life in general. It was awkward at first but then I began to warm up to them where eventually I didn’t have too much trouble talking to him. About a week passed and it was time to go home. I felt a little better after talking with him, but I still felt angry and depressed that he had left my life when I was a child. A couple years passed and we kept up our routine of talking every once in a while on the phone. I was november and I was turning 16 soon and my mother decided to fly my father out to California for the holidays. So my father was flown out to California to spend time with me once again but this time it was much different. He avoided me this time around. During the days from about 8am-3pm I had school. From about 3pm-7pm each day I had wrestling practice. I wasn’t home much and every night when I got home he was already asleep. The only times I would have free was the weekends, but when the weekend rolled around he would go stay at a hotel and I began to realize he was avoiding me. About a week later I woke up and walked downstairs and say that my father was gone. Without a word my father had flown back to Wisconsin without so much as saying bye. At this time I became suicidal. I tried to kill myself with an extension cord I hung from the railing on the balcony at my house. I was going through with it but the knot came undone from the railing. I tried cutting my veins to bleed myself out but I never could cut deep enough. I even tried overdosing, but I always ended up puking them all up. I thought I was the worst thing to ever happen, I blamed myself for him leaving thinking maybe if I was a better kid he would’ve stuck around. He stopped calling after that and we lost contact again. I started going to rigorous therapies and was given major antidepressant medication. About a year passed before I was in a better condition. August rolled around and I finally had the strength to call my father and ask him about why he left again. I called his phone, but it was not my father who picked up the phone, it was a hospice worker. The hospice worker informed me that my father had taken a turn for the worst and that he wasn’t expected to make it through the night. I got to talk to my father one last time that day. I told him that I loved him and that I forgave him for everything. I told him that he was my father no matter what he had done in the past. My father died that night in his home, alone besides a few hospice workers. I cried when I received the news but at the same time I realized that those words I spoke to him must of provided some closure and made it easier for him pass