Here today gone tomorrow.

by Holly

Four years ago I decided it was enough. I needed to be on my own. Our marriage had fallen apart and it was affecting our family of 6 kids. It was a blended marriage. Two were his, three mine and one together. Everything started out fine. We made a schedule for when Daddy would have the little one. For three and a half years, Monday, Wednesday and every other weekend our little one went to Daddy's house and got to see his sisters. Daddy would email pictures to me of them having fun together with him and his sisters. He took him to baseball practice weekly and attended all of his games, no fail. He took him to his first day of kindergarden to meet his teacher.

Then last summer, he met a woman. She was a single-mom with 4 kids from three different fathers. He started missing a day here, a day there with a decent explanation that always made sense. Then he missing two weeks, then a month. Within 6 months, he stopped visiting all together. I had no phone numbers, I didn't know where he lived. The only way to contact Daddy was by email. I started by sending angry emails of "what are you doing!" and over the past 4 months it has tapered down to "Please!! come see your son. He misses you and is sad and angry". No 5 year old would understand. "Daddy" doesn't answer my emails and hasn't seen his son since September and I haven't had an email from him since December. The last one, him saying he needs "help" and he wants to see his son. My reply, which was the truth, "I was going to grandma and grandpa's that weekend", which we only do a couple of times a year... should I have changed my plans after months of him not seeing his son? Would it have changed anything?

How does a father going from being the proverbial "perfect" father to no father at all? How can he sleep at night? How can he look at himself in the mirror and feel happy?

I know from his Facebook page that he lived less than 10 miles from me... I look on his daughter's page and see pictures of him and his new "family" go to the park or celebrating a birthday. On nights like these I can't sleep and wonder if my son will turn out ok...

Filed under: Where did your kid(s) father or mother Go?