Mr. Vasser,
Thank you for the time you set aside to share information you did about my father. Any information helps the healing process. 20 years of estrangement leaves many questions unanswered. Only rarely would I see the man after he and my mother divorced. I played baseball, basketball and football throughout High School... he never attended a single game. Despite this, and future efforts, he showed no interest. That said, his decision to disinherit his children from the will does not suggest his children were among the "many regrets" that he apparently mentioned to Darren. Rather, the act is a symbolic middle finger to all three of us. Clearly he felt it was our fault we grew up without a father.
We use to hear from Joanne when she was still married to Tommy, but never him. I received a letter from her in 1998 informing me that they had learned that my
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That he blames his children for not being in his life, is telling of the lack of responsibility he took for his addiction and his unwillingness to accept that his relationship with alcohol was to blame. I can forgive him for all his transgressions with one exception. Tommy never paid child support. The amount of burden this caused our mother is heartbreaking to think about even today. She struggled working two jobs while he did nothing. He worked, he had money.
Sadly, getting dead beat dads to pay was a little more challenging back then. The only option was to put him in jail for a few weeks and all he had to do was leave the state to avoid that threat. $250/month for 12 years is all that was required of him. It was my hope that Tommy would realize this is his greatest injustice and would want to compensate us, not disinherit us. It's this $36,000 that hurts. Instead, his last act leaves nothing but guilt and the feeling that the three of us somehow did something so horrible to him that we don't even deserve that