Last Will and Testament

I, the signed, make this Last Will and Testament.

This message is for the son I’ve wronged in this life. A son who I’ve waited too long to show love to. A son who I hope will take the time to read this.

If you are reading this, then I am most assuredly dead. I have trusted a friend to deliver this little black book with its contents to you as my final wish.

This is also my confession before you and Heaven. As well as a record of my life and yours. I do this because I am your father and I do not have much time left. Let me start at the beginning.

I was born to a well-to-do family in a small town. My family had a lot of history there. My dad was an entrepreneur and my mom was a teacher and a community leader. I was their only child and they spoiled me rotten. I never knew a life where I could not eventually get what I wanted growing up. Toys, bikes, and other things were given to me. Life was simpler back then. About the time I graduated from high school at the top of my class, I had a lot of expectations for my future, but I barely cared about that.

Having a lot of things handed to me, in hindsight, made me reckless. Not illegal reckless, but personality wise reckless. I loved things, women, and, at first occasionally, alcohol and cigarettes. However, I was a functional screwup. I went to college and became a teacher like my mom. I also got married and started a family. About a few years into that life, I met your mom.

I had a textbook perfect life when I met your mom, but I wasn’t satisfied. She saw that and we started a serious relationship. We mutually ended things when it got too much for both of us to keep up the deceit. I didn’t know till years later that she was pregnant with you after that. I didn’t stop with your mom though. I had many affairs before my wife found out and divorced me.

Life went on and I married again and started a new family. Next thing I knew I started making the same mistakes as with my last family, but with a few new ones. I started making risky investments into things that I am not going to bore you about. Let’s just say they were stupid. I also started drinking more to deal with the stress. Around this time, an old co-worker told me about you and your mom. I’m ashamed to say that I didn’t take the news too well at the time. Especially since everything was falling apart in my life by then. I eventually got another divorce and lost nearly everything I had in bad investments and legal bills.

Life was real rough for a time after that. My drinking led me to being essentially homeless and getting into trouble that led to jail time. At my lowest I even contemplated suicide. I managed with the help of a local church to get a job at a dry cleaners and slowly get my life together.

After working there a few years, you came in one day. You didn’t recognize me, but I saw your mother’s face on you and knew. You have no idea how happy I was to see you. After finding out that you moved here in the city, I found myself with an opportunity to be in your life and you in mine.

I spent days wondering how I was going to reveal myself to you. Would I just come out and say it or maybe throw hints. All the possibilities of what we could do after. Then another thought hit me. All the ways that I could screw this up. I was selfish and had a self-destructive pattern that I didn’t want to come to you. I had a family twice over and screwed up both chances. I didn’t want to do it again with you. So I made the painful decision to hide who I was from you.

In hindsight it was perhaps the best choice. I never developed the best relationship with my other children. I was too busy making the very mistakes that cost me them. Now they want nothing to with me. With that said, I got a chance to know you better and vice versa. In the few years we’ve known each other, I’ve grown to admire you and become proud of the man you’ve become. Unlike me, you grew up with less things, but more love. I am grateful to your mom and stepdad being there for you in ways that mattered best.

I must apologize for hiding my illness from you. I didn’t want you to worry. In the time I’ve known you, you gave me the gift of feeling like a father again. I have one final gift for you. In this notebook is a check for $20,000. I ask that you use it where it will do the most good. The rest of the notebook has the latest contact information of my other children as well as the arrangements for my funeral.

I hope that even though I deceived you, know that I love you, son. I’ve wronged you in keeping you out of my life for so long and not being the man, the father you need.

Love,

Your father