To the Moon and Back

Once upon a time, there was a little girl whose mother loved her to the moon and back.  They stuck together through thick and thin.  The little girl's biological father was a man who was loved very much by the little girl's mother.  But the father did not know how to love back.  He cheated on the mother many, many times.  He beat the mother many, many times. Once, he watched the mother almost bleed to death and refused to call an ambulance. He finally dropped the mother off at the emergency room, but did not stick around to make sure she would be ok.  He broke the mother's jaw when he hit her with a frying pan.  
When the little girl was 2, the mother finally had enough.  She did not want the little girl to grow up in a miserable and violent home.  The father moved out and went to live with the woman he had been currently cheating with - a woman who eventually left him to go back to her female lover, but that's a story for another time.  I will just say, that for a man who thought he was God's gift to women, it must have really bruised his ego to be left for a woman. 
The father eventually tried to get back together again with the little girl's mother. The little girl's mother wanted to give him ONE MORE CHANCE. In the end, it turned out that the little girl's father had married the ex-wife of his brother and was actually cheating on HER with the mother of the little girl, unbeknownst to either woman. The little girl's mother did not know that the little girl's father had gotten married, especially since he told her that maybe it was time for THEM to get married. The news eventually came out and the little girl's mother told him to leave her alone.  Sadly, he decided to also leave his little girl alone, too.  The saddest day of the little girl's mother was the day the little girl came to her and said, "I think my Dave daddy forgot all about me."  

But that is not the end of the story.  A few years later, the little girl's father contacted the little girl's mother and said he wanted to be part of the little girl's life again.  He now had a new little girl with his wife, the ex-wife of his brother, and he wanted the little girls to grow up together.  The little girl's mother agreed to let him back into the little girl's life (from which she had never asked him to leave) on the condition that he be a permanent part of her life and sees her on a regular basis. To see her just a few times and decide he didn't want to see her again would be cruel and hurtful to the little girl.  So, one day the little girl's father came and picked her up for the day.  He and his wife and his new baby girl took the little girl for the day.  They took her shopping and bought her a new teddy bear and a new outfit. They took her to their home and she played with her new baby sister.  They brought the little girl home to her mother at the end of the day.  And the little girl and her mother never heard from him again.  Thirty years later the little girl, all grown up, found her baby sister and the two finally got to meet again. The baby sister's mother and the father of the two girls had already divorced.  Not too many years later, the father of the two little girls died.  One of the little girls was devastated.  She had grown up with her father and she and her father had been very close.  The other little girl was also hurt, but in a different way.  She had already lost the father many years ago and had mostly grieved that loss already. Her hurt was more about the fact that she would never have the chance to get to know the man who had once loved her as much as he'd loved the other little girl who grew up with him as her daddy. She would never hear him say, "I'm sorry".   
The moral to this story:
Parents, if you break up with the other parent of your child, do not forget that the child is the one who hurts the most.  Do not leave your child behind. Do not make them feel less than. Do not sentence them to a life of wondering "why?".  
The little girl in this story is now 48 years old. She is my daughter.  I still love her to the moon and back. And we still stick together through thick and thin.