The third absolutely normal but weird thin about me... I miss my father more than anything even though I was raised in a single parent family headed by my mother

well I guess I should start of with the fact that growing up, I never saw my father dying as a possibility of life. Yes everyone died at some point but obviously when I was very young I never saw it as something I would have to deal with. Getting older then I realised that anything could happen at any time and that maybe I should prepare myself for what would happen if my MOTHER died. I don’t really know if it was because her death would leave me with no caregiver or the fact that I knew my mother had health issues anyway. Whatever it was I just thought that the death I would have to deal with if any would be my mother's. My father dying was as I said before, impossible. He never got ill, he looked weirdly young for his age and he had over a dozen children to be there for. Why would he die? Maybe I also thought that the fact that I hardly saw him would make it easier for me. It didn’t.

Between the years of 2005 and 2007 my father fell ill on several occasions and was sent in and out of hospital. Apparently he asked of me a lot but I refused to call him, firstly because I hardly had anything to say to him, secondly because in my head he probably only had malaria and will be good in no time and thirdly and most stupidly of all things I wasn’t talking to him because he criticised my SATS results. Since 2005 I adamantly refused to talk to my father about anything at all including school stuff until I either was able to get straight As or I died, whichever came first. To be honest I was quite happy with the Bs and occasional Cs I was getting. I knew I was smart but I had my weak points, besides that growing up I never really saw myself as a high and mighty career woman, I just wanted to marry a nice guy have a few kids a nice house, maybe a turtle (I shall specify in later posts) and be happy. As a matter of fact until my father died I actually thought there might be a possibility of me being/ or planning to get married by 20 (obviously that ship has sailed now) but I knew that there was no way my family would be satisfied just with me being 'happy' so I actually considered going to uni and made it an option. To me either I got married and my happy family or I had a career, there was no middle point and to be honest after the speech I got from my father over my level 6.8 in my maths SATS exam my dreams kinda started to falter a little. I still wanted to live a life where I would be a young mother and be able to spend all day with my kids but then there was what my dad wanted for me, or rather what I thought he wanted.

Anyway that’s just a little background on why I wasn’t talking to him. I finished my GCSE mocks in the summer of 2005 and they were up to no standard my father would accept so I continued to refuse all contact with him though he would beg my sister to make me call him. I never did.

Even when I started getting news that he was getting worse I still didn’t call, too ashamed to face him and still holding on to the fact that my daddy cant die and there will be more than enough time to get my telling offs. Then came February 2007, I was attending an all night service at church, prior to which I had been told that my dad was getting worse by the day. I still didn’t call but by the end of the service I burst into tears when I felt this unreal, not physical pain in my chest. I asked my pastor to pray for him and I could not stop crying through the entire prayer.

I guess that was the beginning of the end. I don’t really know all the details of my dads illness because he was in Ghana the whole time but in the months between February and June I felt like utter shit. I would pick up the phone to call him and drop it again I would wake up at night crying for no apparent reason, I was thinking about my father 24/7 and as a result got very close to flunking my GCSEs but I didn’t, I got my 10 A*-Cs and decided to bury the hatchet and reconcile with my daddy. Somehow I thought 'now he must be proud of me somehow'. True because at that point he had already passed away and I guess dead people don’t keep grudges. I finished my exams at the beginning of June at which point he was already gone for weeks, but no body told me. The only thing that gave it away was this pulling feeling I had towards him everyday to call him, to buy him stuff as a peace offering. Funnily enough everyone else knew, even my little cousins but did a really good job at hiding it from me.

On the 27^th of June (the morning after my prom) my mother gathered my aunt and her family in their living room, in my head it was because they wanted to hear gist about my prom. Silly huh?

Well nothing could have prepared me for what was coming. My mothers long, ridiculous speech that gave everything away from the start (though I was still trying to deny it), the pain of being lied to for over a month, everything I had worked for being for absolutely nothing. I almost attacked my mother, calling her a liar. It wasn’t true, to me it just wasn’t true. I would have screamed and kicked if my boyfriend at that time hadn’t been a 6'4'' heap of a human being and retained my every move.

For me it was over, everything was gone. Everything I wanted was useless now. Why get married if he cant walk me down the isle, shout at people during the preparations, get jolly with his friends at my traditional wedding and be proud but still make heat under my husbands ass, what’s the point of having kids if he wont be there to buy them dresses that look like they belong on a porcelain doll and wont be there to watch them destroy my furniture cz he thinks kids should be left to explore.

What of the memories of him taking us to the beach and restaurants etc. What’s the point of owning nice houses and have money and a career if I wont here him complain about how he cant operate the expensive TV or how the house help didn’t prepare his food appropriately, what’s the point if he’s not there for me to buy him cars, loan him money ill never ask back or go to trips with him I really don’t enjoy but I do anyway because I know he just wants to show me off. I lost all reason to all the things I lived for and to be honest I still haven’t found a substitute motivation.

His funeral came by and I didn’t attend because it was in Ghana and my mother thought it wise not to take me. To be honest I wanted to go but was scared of accepting he was gone, if I had seen him I’d have to believe it and I refused to. I have never set a foot on his grave site in the whole four years of his death and am not sure I want to.

Sometimes I really dislike the way hate and love go together, I want so much to detest him for leaving me and not even saying goodbye, not even letting me know he was going so I could be on the first plane down to be with him in his last moments like some of my siblings got to. I hate him because he made me want to be such a great person to make him proud and then just left, I hate him coz he took away part of my identity. I lived life being ' wofa yaw's daughter' and now am nothing.

But still I love him, I would do anything to be with him, would give anything to have him here because if it wasn’t him, I wouldn’t have grown up being who I am. I wouldn’t have grown up loving where i'm from, speaking the language of my ancestors, I wouldn’t have half of the confidence I once had, I wouldn’t have been so proud to be nothing else but just what I am. He loved me, probably much more than I even recall, he would have given the world to keep me if there was the slightest chance I was to get lost.. he would have been there if I had let him.

So somehow I guess its understandable why I miss my father above anything else

and its weirdly normal to do so.