Storytime Tapestry Newsletter

The newsletter devoted to spreading love and cultural awareness around the world.

Carol’s Corner

July 28, 2007

A Fatherless Child

By Carol Roach

I had a father until I was 9 years old. That was until he blurted out that I was not his daughter anyhow.  My whole world changed that day.  It was then that I made the stark realization that all the family I had ever known was not really my family at all.  Who was my family – I really didn’t know.

My grandmother, who raised me, my father's mother, was not my grandmother, his sister and brothers were not my uncles and aunt.  My cousins were not my cousins. It was then that I learned the ugly truth about rejection. I was 9 years old and I felt terribly alone.

I soon realized after much agonizing, that my grandmother will always be my grandmother. In essence she is my mother and the only person in this world who loved me. She was there as I was growing up, unlike the man who was my father and then decided not to be.  He left his legacy, he had impacted my life. He left me with a scar that would not heal.

It was 25 years ago when he came to my grandmother's funeral, and it also was the last time I ever saw him. My son asked who he was.  Can you imagine that my little boy did not even know his own grandfather!  I simply replied “he’s nobody.”

Some might judge me for that answer and so be it, but it was my way of dealing with the hurt of rejection.  It was my way to dismiss it and make it seem unimportant, when the exact opposite was true.  It still hurt to know that the man I had known and loved for 9 years of my life disowned me like a pair of old shoes.  What I responded to my son is what I believed my father felt in his own “heart towards me and mine.” We were nothing to him; people who did not deserve any respect or humanity.

After the funeral service, the three of us sat in the limousine, remaining speechless for the entire trip back home. There were tears in Kenneth's eyes that day. I supposed it was because he was grieving over his mother. It had relatively nothing to do with what I had said. After all he didn’t care about us. He made that very clear many years before when he said those vicious words in a drunken stupor and broke his little girl’s heart.

It turned out to be the last day any family member saw him.  After the funeral, he disowned his brothers and sister.  There was no reason for him to look back. The family was never good enough for him.  He had moved on.

He refused his brother's dying request to see him. He did not care enough to see his brother one last time before he passed away. Fast forward to the present, I do not know if Kenneth is dead or alive.  But I do know that I missed having a father all of my life.

Some people wonder after my divorce, why I did not return to my maiden name. Part of the reason was that my son needed to feel he was still a part of me and so we shared the same name.  The other reason was that I had no name to go back to.  I did not have a father, so why should I carry on the hypocrisy of honouring his name.

My identity as a human being commenced when I became Carol Roach.  I am not Mrs. Roach anymore, but I will always be Carol Roach.  I may marry my beloved Matt, but I will always be Carol Roach; for Carol Roach is the essence of me.