not the same
my mom broke up with her boyfreind again, and he has two kids i ment to put this in a while ago but forgot well when she was still with him she old me michel and vannessa were haveing a hard time with there dads divorce. i said well i know what thats like, she said well thats the way its been all youre life...i said what about mike, she said well thats not youre dad! i geuss i have to explain a little about mike...when i was 6-7 years old she went out with this guy mike, they fell in love and we moved in with him. i really liked him, after a while i loved him to. i started to call him dad...he was the only man i ever thought of as my father...after another while we moved to hawii, to be with his sister, after two weeks there he stoped talking to her and we moved back here. i was crushed, two weeks after we came back mike died..the only man i ever thought of as my dad, the only one i loved like a dad....but no he wasnt my dad so it wasnt the same as what michel and vanessa are going though. i almost cried right there....but that was a while ago...i dont know why im writeing this but ive just been thinking about him...i miss him so much
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cc, the facts might not be the same (their dad getting a divorce, your loss of Mike) but the emotions are exactly the same. \"He wasn\'t your dad\" doesn\'t mean anything. Plenty of dads never earn the affection and love of their children, and plenty of \"surrogate dads\" earn it all. Because Mike was \"dad\" to you, losing him was like losing a father. In a sense it\'s worse because no one validates your grief. It\'s called \"disenfranchised grief\"--you grieve as much as anyone, but society doesn\'t \"recognize\" your right to grieve. However that doesn\'t mean that you don\'t have every right to grieve him, to remember him, to cherish the relationship you had with him...don\'t let anyone take that away from you. The one thing that entitles you to grieve, and forces you to grieve, is love. You loved Mike, and your grief and love for him will always be a part of who you are. I hope you have pictures or something to remember him by, or you could keep a journal with memories of him and thoughts about him, just for you. Your mom may minimize it because her relationship with him fell apart--but YOURS didn\'t. Your love went on, and goes on, whether your mom\'s relationship continued on or not.
Fathers need not fathers be.
All one needs to do is choose
To love for life, and that embrace,
Held long and hard, bestows the grace
Each craves. For all in time must lose,
Restored alone by memory.
So now it is with you and me.
Nicholas Gordon