Chapter 5

Chapter 5
After a couple of years he and Jill split up. He said that she wanted to get married and have another child. She was really young when she had Thomas and she wanted to have his baby.

V was married once and no longer believed in marriage. He never had kids of his own, he said he couldn't justify bring an innocent souls into this fucked up world. I understood his logic.

I had to admit that it was a selfish decision to bring my daughter in this world. It was mostly about making my life better.  My husband said he wanted the same thing. I was optimistic.

I justified my decision to V by saying that she could be the person to change the future in some significant way like curing cancer, or maybe her child or grandchild will save us all.

V asked about her all the time and seemed to enjoy giving me parenting advice. He was much more of an influence in her life than she will ever know. She has grown into a beautiful and self confident young woman and I still give him some of the credit.

A couple of years before he died we were talking and he was pondering whether he was right about not having a child. I told him I wished I could have been the mother of his baby because the world could use more people like him. He said he would happily knock me up and then I could come home and raise it.

Me: "I guess I could send you pictures and give you an update once in a while"
V: "Yes, we could do that"
Me: "you say that now but I know you would not be happy watching some other man raise your child"
V: "How would that be different than what I am doing now watching your little girl grow up?"
Me: "It takes more than being a sperm donor to be a Dad. You have been a second Father to my daughter without her even knowing, and of course Thomas, you are a Father to him too. So all your life you resisted being a parent and you ended up being one anyway."

According to V, Jill could not convince him to marry her or have a baby with her and it went down hill from there.

He rarely said anything negative about her.  One time he told me that he made her angry when decided to give her oral sex while she was asleep. He didn't understand why she was angry, He told me he wished someone would wake him up like that.

I was sad that he was going through such a difficult time. I knew it was really hard for him and I hated that I couldn't be with him. He truly loved her but they couldn't work it out. He was a proud man and I'm sure I never heard all of the details.

He took a long break from talking to me when he moved out, without warning. I thought he was gone forever.  After a couple of weeks I was checking obituaries.....

When he finally felt like talking to me about it, he told me that when they moved in together he had two sets of furniture because his ex-wife gave him most of her things when she moved back to .Jamaica and Jill had her own house as well. When he split up with Jill, she bought a house, he painted it inside and out, helped her move, changed light fixtures all kinds of stuff.

Meanwhile he moved into a tiny apartment, he had a couch, a TV, a mattress (she kept the frame and the springs), a dresser and his office furniture. He said he finally called her and asked if he could have some silverware and dishes. He laughed about it when he told me but I decided maybe she wasn't as nice as I thought she was after that.

He told me that months later she told him she wanted him back and he told her "a cow doesn't miss it's tail until the flies carry it away".