Lincoln, I Love You

My life has always been a mess. At age five I almost drowned, at age six I was raped for a year, age eleven I was attacked by a grown man, and age seventeen I was robbed at gunpoint. Basically my entire life had been a constant barrage of shit thrown onto my plate, which made me hate myself. The only thing that ever made me feel like I wasn’t worthless, the only thing that made me proud, was my family. I had found the most amazing wife and we had the most beautiful and intelligent children; I was ecstatic. Until I got that phone call, which changed my entire life.

To give a little back story, my current wife wasn't my first love. When I was in high school I had met this girl, Hailey, who I believed was the love of my life, the girl who I wanted to grow old with, but after about a year or so of dating, she mysteriously left me without a trace. I never heard from her after that and it devastated me for the longest time. I couldn’t love anyone else until I met Heather. Apparently, though, I couldn’t ever be happy or love myself because of that phone call.

When I picked up the phone, it was an 816 area code and I had no idea who it could be. I grew up in a small town in Missouri with this area code, but I hadn’t been back there in years. I am now 35 and living in Portland, Oregon. I have lived here for well over ten years now, so I had no idea who would be calling me. I picked up the phone and pressed answer. The voice that I heard was strangely similar to mine, but I had no clue who it was. The person said, “Hello, is this Grant Lawson.” I said yes. Then the voice said four words that I have had ringing in my ears ever since, “I found you, Dad.”

He sounded as if he had just won the lottery. I was more confused than when I picked up the phone I said, “I’m sorry, I think you are mistaken. I have five kids and they are all here with me.” The phone went silent and after a while I heard coming across, in almost a whisper, that name I thought I would never hear again, “ My mother is Hailey Wilson. She told me you were my father.” I almost dropped the phone. My wife came over to me and asked what's wrong. I immediately got back on the phone and said, “Go to my parents' house this Friday at 5 and we will meet. Your mother knows where they live,” and I hung up.

My wife asked who was on the other end of the phone and I said my son. She choked up and started crying, she thought I had cheated. I told her all about Hailey and our relationship throughout high school and how she left me without a trace. I told her to start packing up her bags and the kids, because we were going to my parents house, then I left our home, drove to the airport, and bought seven tickets to Kansas City, Missouri.

Once off the plane my nerves started getting the best of me. I had to stop on the side of the road to vomit and let my wife take the wheel all the way back to Harrisonville. Once we arrived at my parents house, I got out, walked up to the door, and knocked. My dad opened the door and had the most surprised and bewildered look on his face I had ever seen. I said, “It’s been a while, Dad, I missed you.” He started tearing up, so I grabbed my dad in a bear hug and lifted him off the ground. My mother was behind him and she was already bawling I took her in my arms and told her I loved her and told them both I’m sorry it took me so long to come home. My family followed and I introduced my parents to Heather and their five grandchildren: Garth, Gage, Gabriella, Arno, and baby Gia. Then I said they would be meeting grandchild number six soon and I started crying, so I went outside. My wife told my parents the whole story and they understood.

About an hour later, a light blue Toyota Camry pulled into my parents driveway. A teenager about 6’1 stepped out and there was still a woman about my age still in the car. I went up to the boy and said, “So you are my son.” He looked at me and said, “It appears so.” I asked him his name, he said Lincoln Lawson. I started tearing up even worse, so I grabbed the boy in my arms and said, son I’m sorry I wasn’t there, but I need you to know that I love you. He started crying too, so I told him to go wait inside, because I needed to talk to his mother.

I walked up to her window and she rolled it down revealing the same face I had been in love with all those years ago. The first words to come from my mouth were, “Why didn’t you tell me?” A tear rolled down her cheek as she said, “I was scared you wouldn’t love me or our baby if you knew.” This made me more hurt than anything else. I whispered, “I told you there was nothing you could ever do to make me hate you. I told you I would love you no matter what. Every moment with you made my world happy even though I was sinking in depression. If I had known I had a child, I would have done everything to make you and the child happy. I would have given anything to make either of you smile, but you took that from me.” She squeaked out an I’m sorry, but I was already screaming now. “How could you do this to me? Did you ever love me? I always knew that you didn’t love me as much as I loved you, but I never knew you would stoop as low as to keep my child from me. What's even worse is how you made my child believe his father didn’t care. That boy probably hates me, he probably thinks I’m a terrible dad, all because I never knew he existed. He has two years left of being a child and that's all the amount of time he will have with his father as a child. I’m going to ask you one favor and that's to let my child live with me for these last two years of childhood, so I can actually have a relationship with him?” She nodded her head and I turned to head back inside. She called for me to turn around and when I did, she said one final thing before leaving. She said, “ Grant, I always loved you, and I made sure your son knew that you loved him too.” I replied, “ I still love you, I always have, but I also hate you for keeping me from having my family whole.” Then she backed out of the driveway and drove off.

I went back inside and saw my son playing with my other children. They were already a family before I even introduced them. My wife told me Lincoln was one of the sweetest boys she had ever met and I was so happy. I pulled Lincoln aside and tried talking to him, but he seemed to not care, he told me that he knew I didn’t know he existed, and said he knows that I love him. He also said that he doesn’t love me. He told me he had wanted a dad all his life and even though he had one now, he didn’t feel any different. I asked if he wanted to come live with us and he told me he would, but he also said he wasn’t gonna call me Dad.

When we got back to Oregon, my family went back to their normal day-to-day business and Lincoln started getting acclimated to living here with us, but I could never go back to my life from before. I started to slowly fall back into depression and I hated myself even more than before. I started drinking, again, even worse than I did when I was young. When I was in high school and college, I drank more alcohol than I should have and smoked marijuana everyday to try and make the pain and the self-hate go away, but I was really just numbing myself.

I went back to both of my vices. I started carrying a flask filled with the hardest liquor I could find and visiting bars during my lunch breaks and after work. I would carry joints, blunts, and pipes with me everywhere I went and smoke every time I felt pain. The thing is, this mixture started making me think more than I wanted. I started thinking about how my son hates me. I started thinking about how I wasn’t there for any of his milestones. My son learned to walk without me, my son’s first word wasn’t 'dada,' because I wasn’t there, my son never learned how to ride a bike with his father, all because I wasn’t there.

My wife slowly started to get more and more worried about me. Heather was the most amazing woman I knew, because even though I was a piece of shit, she still loved me and didn’t leave me. She would take my flask and hide it and take my weed and flush it, knowing she could do it without fear of me, because I loved her too much to ever get angry.

Two years went by and my family was always happy. Lincoln graduated valedictorian of his class and dedicated all of his hard work and triumph to me, of all people. He said I only met my father two years ago, but I have seen him work harder than anyone else I have ever met. He said this is what pushed him to work harder and harder and harder. I heard this speech through the vent of a porta potty because I was vomiting my guts out. I started bawling in a pool of vomit on the floor of a porta potty knowing that this was the end. I couldn’t let anyone else see me for something I wasn’t. I couldn’t let my family suffer with a lie of a father anymore.

The next day, my wife took Lincoln and all the rest of our children out for breakfast while I slept off my hangover. An hour or so after they left, I walked downstairs, tears rolling down my face as I wrote this note. “Heather, Garth, Gage, Gabriella, Arno, Gia, and Lincoln, I love you all more than anything, but I can’t go on living a lie. I can’t go on letting you all look up to me when I don’t deserve it. I want you, Heather, to find a real man who deserves their love and affection to marry you and raise these amazing kids. You all deserve someone who will be a role model, someone who won’t do the terrible things I have done. I want you all to remember this isn’t because I don’t love you, because nothing could be farther from the truth. You all have my entire heart. You all are the only things that have ever made me happy and the only things I have ever been proud of. I love you all. As for you Lincoln, I want you to keep growing up to be the amazing man you are. You keep making me more and more proud every day. Any woman to ever get you as a husband will be lucky, son. And remember one thing, son, Lincoln, I love you.”

I set the note on me and my wife’s bed and I tied the noose around a metal bar we had on the ceiling. I stood on the chair said my final I love you put the noose around my neck and kicked the chair out. It took a few minutes of pain, but I was gone.

My family came home later, happy and laughing. My wife called for me. When she didn’t get a response, she went upstairs to our room, opened the door, and fell to her knees, and screamed. Lincoln was the first to run upstairs. As my family looked up at me hanging there, they started bawling. Lincoln ran over to me and pulled the noose off, holding me in his arms, screaming Dad, please come back, don’t leave me, but he knew, just like the others, that I was gone. My wife found the note and couldn’t read it, she just handed it to Lincoln, who read it and broke down.

My entire family came for the funeral. They all were so devastated. I didn’t want this, I wanted them to know how this was for the best. My wife was the first to speak of how much she loved me and how she will never love again, then my father came and spoke of how his boy was the most important thing that he ever had in his life, and then the one that got to me and everyone else the most was my son, Lincoln’s words. He said, “When I first met Grant, I told him I would never call him Dad and that I would always hate him for never being there, but that's not true. While living with Grant for these last two years, I realized none of it was his fault and that he truly did love me with all his heart. So I just hope he can hear me say this one thing that I wished I could have told him when he was alive. Grant, you aren’t just Grant, you are my dad and I love you now and I always will.”

They put me in the ground after this, so I was gone forever, finally. My wife comes to visit me once a month now and she is always bawling while I try my hardest to wrap my arms around her to console her. My parents would come once a month, as well, till their end, which wasn’t much longer after mine. Lincoln would come visit me once a week. He would say this is to make up for lost time, Dad. He was the only one I was ever able to get to see me or hear me after I was gone and I knew what I had to say. The one chance I got, it was a warm, sunny day. It was my birthday. He showed up with a cake and was leaving it there, singing 'Happy Birthday,' when I materialized in front of him and grabbed him in my arms. He was speechless. I told him there is one thing I needed to say before I could move on and that was, “Lincoln, I love you.”