My Dad Was My World. At 11, I Faced A Heartbreaking Reality – And Didn’t Speak To Him For 30 Years

Last winter, I received a distraught message from a man’s voice I didn’t recognise. “Daddy’s dying, can you come?” 

My brother was in Washington state, where he and my father lived together in an overgrown and unincorporated part of the county near the Canadian border. I hadn’t seen or spoken to either of them in 30 years.

When we were kids, my younger brother and I were inseparable, and people called me Daddy’s girl. For a sliver of my life, my father was my whole world. 

I was three when my parents divorced, and my dad took my younger brother and me from Alaska to California, leaving our mother behind.

We saw her in short spurts during holidays and summers, but my dad became the centre of our lives. 

Then, when I was six, my dad married a woman ...