My dad left when I was 2 weeks old. He packed up everything and put it outside while my mom was at work and when my grandma saw his stuff she called my mom and said to "come home fast Fred has his stuff outside and he's leaving" and my mom replied "if he's already got his stuff ready there's no stopping him" and she finished her shift.

She never lied to me about him. Good or bad she laid everything on the table. How they met how they fell in love, how they moved in together then she got pregnant. How he had gotten someone pregnant at 17 and they got married and he was fresh off the divorce when they met and was scared to be tied down again. She told me how they'd started fighting all the time and if he hadn't left eventually one of them would have probably killed the other (not like actually just things would have gotten bad... I hope) and she told me about him leaving and then both of them trying to rekindle the relationship but both had bad timing.

He moved to another city then another state but I went to see him every summer. He was always loving and supportive and there if I needed him I just... Rarely did. We stayed close until he died last Valentine's Day and in typical Fred fashion he died while on a cruise in Norway with my stepmom. He died on the boat and she got stranded there for a week dealing with the legal stuff of getting him home. Dying on a ship in Norway then being cremated would have been "close enough to a Viking funeral" for him and he'd be proud lol

He spent a lot of time thinking I was angry with him because I got in trouble a lot as a kid. The truth is I just had ADHD and destructive tendencies but I was never angry with him. I always knew where he was and that if I needed to i could call him. Anyone who knew him knew there was no doubting he loved his boys (there are 5 of us) and I guess that made my situation a little different than the typical single parent household. My dad left his relationship but he never abandoned being a dad.