Mom left when I was five, so Dad raised me almost entirely on his own.
\nHe worked four jobs at one point just to keep food on the table and pay the bills. As a kid, I didn\u2019t understand what that meant. I only saw that he was always tired, always wearing old clothes, and never had money for anything extra.
\nBy the time I was seventeen, I was embarrassed by him.
\nThen Mom suddenly came back into my life.
\nShe had married a wealthy man, lived in a beautiful house, and promised me private school, a car, and a future Dad could never afford.
\nI chose to go with her.
\nDad didn\u2019t argue. He simply hugged me and said, \u201cI hope you get everything you\u2019re looking for.\u201d
\nAfter I left, he never called.
\nI assumed he was angry.<\/p>\n
Ten weeks later, I was back in town and decided to visit.
\nHis car was outside, but the house was strangely quiet.
\nI used my old key and stepped inside.
\nOn the kitchen table were hospital papers, prescription bottles, and a stack of overdue bills.
\nThen I found a letter with my name on it.
\nDad had been seriously ill for months.
\nHe had kept working because he wanted to save enough money for my college fund.
\nThe last line said:
\n\u201cI never wanted you to stay because you felt sorry for me.\u201d
\nI sat on the floor and cried.
\nFor the first time, I understood what all those four jobs had really meant.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mom left when I was five, so Dad raised me almost entirely on his own. He worked four jobs at one point just to keep food on the table and pay the bills. As a kid, I didn\u2019t understand what that meant. I only saw that he was always tired, always wearing old clothes, and …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10222,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10221"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10221\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10223,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10221\/revisions\/10223"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}