As a father what do you do when you find out your son is a criminal and heading down a path of no return?
I was a good kid, smart, playing sports and music. However, something was missing for me, at 12 I suffered a traumatic event that no kid should ever have happen and I couldn’t tell anyone! Drugs, alcohol and stealing was my way of dealing with the pain. On top of that, I blamed my dad for not being there to protect me.
As a kid growing up he was never around like the other fathers. I was sad, angry and felt cheated. I knew he loved me deeply and understood intellectually that as a restauranteur he was working all the time to provide for his family. Underneath that understanding were emotional scars that took a lot of work to heal.
I started acting out at 12, stealing cars, burglary, destroying property, getting high. At 15 I started a check cashing scam and my dad caught me.
As a father, what would you do?
To this day, I can only imagine the humiliation, pain and suffering I caused him and my mom as well. It took a tremendous amount of courage to do what he did next and I knew then as I do now writing this “there is nothing that compares to unconditional love” and my Pop stood by me as he….to be continued
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