LogFAQs > #980186691

My mom and dad were both pretty successful, but they split when I was about 1 year old. Growing up, I never knew the reason. My dad would never talk about it voluntarily and my mom never wanted to speak negatively about him in front of me. My mom would just repeatedly beg me to not start doing drugs and leave it at that, for the most part.

Here and there, my dad would do really weird shit and that was when it really hit me that he still had a drug problem. I can't remember which year it was at this point, but my dad wrote me a check for my birthday and sent it to me in the mail. He spent the money on drugs before I could cash it, though, so the check bounced and I had to pay a $35 fee. I had never tried to cash a bad check before, so in the moment, I was panicking and thinking I was going to go to jail. I called the bank and explained the situation, expecting them to talk about having me arrested. They said the fee was the only thing that would happen, which was somewhat relieving.

I called my dad to ask what the problem was. He was extremely apologetic and said he would send me a money order to make up for it. A few days later, I got an envelope in the mail and there was nothing in it. I was pissed. I called him to tell him that there was nothing in the envelope. He started a self pity thing and I just told him not to send me any more money. At this point, I still never understood why my parents split up, but that event gave me a small idea.

My dad was gravely ill in early to mid 2018. I was at the point where I had mostly grown apart from even having an attachment to him. I would answer the phone when he called and be cordial, but he had gone into a pretty extreme conspiracy theory rabbit hole and I didn't enjoy talking to him any more. I was debating whether I even wanted to go to Alabama to see him. My cousins were telling me that his health was deteriorating pretty quickly, so I decided to go.

I was working a ton on a regular basis and ESPN was having an event at a certain location at my old job. I made sure the network was ready for that and then just started driving from Austin, TX to Pollard, AL to go see him. I think I started the drive at about 10am.

By the time I got to Louisiana, they had moved him to a hospital in Pensacola, FL because he kept voluntarily leaving the hospital in Alabama and one of my cousins needed to be close to him. It wasn't much of a difference for me because I was just driving on I10 any way.

I got to the hospital and saw my dad for the first time in years. He seemed to be in good spirits, but had some serious health issues. I wanted to ask him about the weird stuff he had done and ask all the why questions, but... I just couldn't muster the courage to do it. I had a feeling he wasn't going to live much longer and didn't want him to have to relive any of the bad times.

I have an older half sister that I found out about when I was 17 and she had an even worse relationship with him than I did. She never showed up to the hospital and I don't really blame her after finding out what she went through. We don't really have a relationship with each other at all outside of being friends on Facebook. We're gonna have to fix that at some point.

The day came when we had to decide to put him in hospice care. It was technically my decision since I was the next of kin, but... I didn't want to make it alone, so my cousins and aunts and uncles who were present agreed that we could make the decision as a group. This was fucking hard. Having to accept that my dad was going to die in that moment was tough.

My dad was in hospice care and it was about 9 or 10 at night. My cousins, aunts, and uncles had been at the hospital all day. We sat on a couch in the hotel lobby and just started talking about random things. The mystery of my parents' divorce was heavy on my mind, though. So I figured I would ask them.

They weren't aware that I didn't know the story, but they told me the whole situation. My dad was a plant manager at some construction company in Florida. He decided to give one of my cousins a ride home in the company car, but he was drunk. He hit some lady and put her in a wheelchair. She sued the company for about $2,000,000 in the 80s and he lost his job. That started a downward spiral of doing hard drugs for him.

My granddad had built a house in Pollard, AL and that's where my dad's side of the family grew up. My grandparents brought him back home to pay for him to go through rehab and stuff. He completed rehab, but went back into the same environment and started doing drugs again. So my mom left. I feel like I know enough of the story that I'm not really in need to know exactly how bad my dad got, but... I do wish I had asked my dad about it when I had the chance.

My mom was working for IBM at the time and her boss was aware of everything that was going on. He helped her get a different job with the company in Austin, TX so she could get far away from him. So when I was about 3, my mom drove with me from Pensacola, FL to Austin, TX. Being in the car during this trip is one of my earliest memories.

I'd go visit my dad every now and then, but my mom was never happy about it and I never knew why until that night in the hospital after we put him in hospice care.

So I have some idea of what the deal was with that bad check, but I wish I had taken the time to ask him about it directly and get a detailed explanation about that and many other things.