I can't really say that I knew my father for the simple fact that he was never really with me. He left when I was only one years old because of his drug addiction. I guess my mother had gone through so many years of him trying to fix himself up that she was tired of it, she couldn't do it anymore, and finally just told him to leave.

I guess at the point that this occurred I was way too young to realize what was going on and the effects that it was having on my family. I do remember that there was a time in my life when I was young that I felt a very cold breeze as though something was not right. I do also have a brief and distant memory of my father, but I don't know if it is real or just my self-conscious trying to deal with what was happening at that point.

When I close my eyes, I hear knocking at the door that continues for a while and then turns into banging, loud banging, with a man's voice screaming on the other side of the door. There is a child, who I am guessing is me, sitting in a high chair frightened by the screaming and banging. I see my mother crying, trying to comfort the child and at the same time telling the strong, slightly slurred masculine voice to go away. There is a lot of commotion in the house and my mother is going back and forth. I hear a lot of screaming, but with that screaming the man who seems to not understand that he is not wanted wants to see me, is begging to see me. My mother, I imagine, just won't hear of it and she continues to tell him to go away and get himself help.

That is where the memory ends. Again, I don't know whether this memory is real or not but it is what I have in my mind. It may seem bad but that is not the only thing that lives in me from my father. I also have my wishes and fantasies of what I would liked to have had with my daddy. I don't want you to think that I didn't know him, because I did know who he was physically, just not who he really was. It's just that every time that I saw him he was not in a good state of mind. He was either high or drunk and really could not relate to me as his youngest daughter.

There were times that he wasn't drunk or high, and I was able to feel like I had a father. He was protective and loving and oh so very proud of who I was. Regardless, he still had a problem that he could not kick. There are little things that I remember and that I keep in my mind, like the big teddy bear hugs with the loving kisses and the way he looked at me with such admiration. "The youngest," he would say with joy in his voice, so proud of what he created but not sure of how to take care of it.

That is not all that lives in that memory. I remember the abuse to him self, the addiction he could not seem to kick. My two sisters and I always trying to tell him, "Stop, daddy, please. You are only hurting yourself." I remember all those moments, his eyes, blood shot red with that crazy waltz back and forth looking as though he might fall. The big beautiful man, the son of a preacher who grew up knowing God, fell into the deepest hole and found no way to take himself out. A man who was a father, a husband, a caring brother and a loving son, now became an alley cat with no kind of destination, just seeking food and shelter.

When my father passed, my biggest pain was the pain of those around me. It wasn't so much that he had died. Those who truly knew him and loved him were suffering and that is what hurt me. When I first found out that my father had died I was a bit mad because I felt that he had killed himself with the years of drug use. Then I realized that by dying he wasn't able to hurt himself anymore and the pain that we (his family) had been going through was over because he was in better place.

Now I realize, being a little bit older, that there was really nothing that anyone in my family or I could have done to help my father. The only way he would have been able to help himself would be through making that decision on his own. He had an addiction that only he could kick and I guess that he wasn't strong enough to do that, so he just chose what he could. I have no hate or resentment for my father, I just wish I could have known the person without the addiction, the person who was my daddy.