forgotten daughter and an empty ring box

I have a picture of you chasing me on a scooter and a handheld pinball machine you gave me when I was 7. I haven't seen your face since I was 9 years old and you gave me your cranberry juice in the hospital. I know you started a wheelchair racing club while you were there and the doctors had to create a new rule forbidding it.

You met my mother in a ice cream shop and proposed to her on a ferry without the ring box.

You were born July 7th in 1947 and you're living somewhere on the downtown east side in a wheelchair because you thought being homeless would be an adventure. I know that you were adopted and never met your birth parents. You had a previous marriage and I look exactly like my half sister. I know my half brother lives in Alberta. I know you've had two failed marriages and five abandoned  children.

Mom says you left us to protect us from the friends you used to ride motorcycles with. That they beat you up on more than one occasion. That they threatened to kill her on the phone once. You left us to protect us from all of your bad decisions.

At my auntie Jeanette's wedding you started an icing war. At my cousin Kevin's wedding I started one too and my aunt scolded me for being just like my father. You have protected me from everything except your DNA. I'm afraid this abandonment is hereditary and that marriages are meant to fail. I won't let anyone fall in love with me because I fear I won't fall in love with them.

I have said everything I know about you in 2 minutes. It is so hard knowing so little about you. I feel like the empty ring box you threw away. There is no wedding ring inside me, all I'm holding onto is your flaws and there are not enough good memories to outweigh them anymore.