A Letter of Closure to Myself
- Peter Morande
- Jul 14, 2025
- 8 min read
Childhood Hopes and Early Distance
For most of my life, I’ve carried a silent, desperate hope that one day I’d have a real father-son relationship. Not just scraps of contact, but presence, understanding, and care.
That hope was tied to Michael, the man who helped create me, then left before I was even old enough to remember him being there.
My earliest years were spent with my mom, a single mother doing her best, and my maternal grandparents, who became my true sources of love, structure, and stability. My grandfather on my mom’s side was more of a father to me than Michael ever was.
Michael left us when I was a toddler, moving to Florida. Throughout my childhood, I visited him for a week or two during the summers, usually around my birthday, until I was about 10 or 11. Then, for nearly six years, there was no contact. No visits. Nothing.
Eventually, I went down for a weeklong visit with Michael, Manon, the kids, and my half-sister. That was the first real interaction in years. A few years later, in 2009, I saw him again at my uncle’s funeral. That was one of the only times he came back to Vermont. I played guitar. My stepbrother sang.
After the funeral, I went down to Connecticut with him and stayed with him, Manon, and the kids for a week.
2014: The Visit That Changed Everything
The most consistent father figure in my life was actually my maternal grandfather. He, along with my mother and grandmother, raised me. He showed up, supported me, and gave me something that resembled stability.
Michael never did. He had three wives over the course of my life, none of them my mother. In fact, he married my second stepmother on my seventh birthday without even telling me. I found out the next summer when I came to visit.
The only truly good thing he gave me was my half-sister. She’s one of my favorite people in the world, even though we’ve seen each other fewer than ten times in our lives. He was always more present for his stepchildren than he ever was for me, his only biological son. They made family trips to Canada, past the very state I lived in, without ever once thinking to visit me.
Several years later, in July 2014, I went down to Connecticut to stay with Michael, Manon, and the kids for about a week. Earlier that year, they had helped me get my first car through a connection they had, which I was genuinely grateful for. That car allowed me to make the trip.
But the visit itself sticks with me for all the wrong reasons.
I arrived to find my father drunk, swaying while using a circular saw to cut up pallets for a fire. I had to intervene before someone got hurt. At one point, during this drunken episode, I remember him pushing down my stepbrother and yelling, "He is the man. He is the father." It nearly escalated into a physical confrontation. I considered leaving then and there.
The next day, Manon and the kids, including my sister, who had been flown up from Florida for the visit, went to Rhode Island for a few days. My sister lived in Florida with her mother, Michael’s second wife, the same woman he married on my seventh birthday. She never lived with Michael and Manon full-time. Every time I saw her there, it was because she had been flown up for a visit.
My father stayed behind. When we returned, he barely acknowledged me. The tension in the house never left.
Then there was the $20 bill.
My sister found it on the stairwell leading to the basement where I was staying. She asked if she could use it to buy hair dye. Believing it had fallen from my cargo shorts after our trip to the beach, I told her she could take it.
Turns out, it wasn’t mine. It was money Manon had left for someone coming by to pick it up. But I didn’t find this out until hours later, during my drive back to Vermont. My sister called me crying. There had been a confrontation between her and Manon.
I called Manon to explain, to clear things up, but she accused me of encouraging my sister to steal.
“You’re not a rich man, Peter,” she said, before hanging up on me.
Eventually, after several attempts, I was able to smooth things over. But the damage was done.
Before I left that day, the same day as the $20 bill incident, Michael, Manon, and my step-siblings were going to church. My sister didn’t want to go, and Michael snapped that only people who went to church got to go out for breakfast afterward.
After they left, I showered, took my sister out to Denny’s myself, and then returned her home before making the long drive back to Vermont.
Trying, Again and Again
Two more years passed.
In 2016, Michael and Manon supplied the wedding rings for my wife and me. They even came to the wedding. I’m grateful for the rings. I truly am.
Even then, I kept hoping that these exchanges would mean something more, that maybe effort was his way of showing love, even if his presence never followed.
Two years after that, Michael asked for a ukulele. I had just started my journey in lutherie. He wanted it in trade for the rings. So I built him a concert ukulele made of Engelmann Spruce and Ambrosia Maple.
I gave the ukulele to him in Maine because he was visiting his father, Jim, and I wanted to present it to him in person. My mom, my wife, and my cousin Justin came along as well. Justin especially wanted to see Jim, since he’s Michael’s father and our grandfather.
That was the last time I saw Michael in person.
In late 2019 to early 2020, my wife was hospitalized. Michael and Manon showed some support then. We video chatted for a bit.
I had just started working in the automotive industry and had asked Michael for a nice watch to wear professionally. He sent one worth around $2000.
A couple of years later, before I moved to Maine, I asked him for financial support, around $600, and he helped.
That’s the extent of our relationship. Outside of sporadic support, child support when I was a kid, and a few birthday and Christmas gifts, there has been very little.
2025: The Final Attempt
And now, in 2025, after everything I’ve been through, one of the darkest periods of my life, I reached out again.
The migraines from my traumatic brain injury intensified into a relentless flare-up. Every day brought pain, nausea, visual disturbances, dizziness, and overwhelming cognitive exhaustion.
These weren’t headaches. They were episodes that made basic functioning nearly impossible.
Around the same time, I reinjured my hand, the same hand I severely damaged years ago, and the pain came back with a vengeance. I finally had an MRI. It confirmed a growing vascular malformation pressing against nerves and causing bone degeneration.
Last semester, I was taking a college drawing class when the reinjury occurred, while barely able to move my hand. I still pushed through, finishing as one of the top students in the class. It hurt every day, but I kept going.
Then came my job at a New England-based business publication. I was promised commissions and support, but received neither. After disclosing my disability, I was denied accommodations and paid less than minimum wage.
I left, not because I wanted to, but because staying meant sacrificing my health and dignity.
I reported it. The Department of Labor found violations. I secured a small settlement, barely enough to stay afloat, but it was a win.
I did that work. I fought back. And I’m proud of that.
Throughout it all, I stayed in school. I earned honors and even received encouragement to apply for a grant based on a podcast I created about my TBI. That project was the most honest I’ve ever been in my work.
For once, I told the truth about what I’ve lived through.
Sharing my story is not something I’m ashamed of. It’s something I’ve fought for.
It is courageous to admit that I need help, and that I cannot navigate all of this alone.
I am not just dealing with physical pain. I struggle every day with severe depression and anxiety. I hate myself more often than not, and it is a constant effort to stay here, to keep trying, to believe that my life is worth continuing.
And yet, I am still here. I am still fighting.
And I did not deserve the treatment I received from Michael or Manon.
This Is My Closure
When I reached out to Michael, I wasn’t asking for money. I asked for a few words. Maybe a share of my story. Just something to remind me I wasn’t invisible.
Instead, I was met with silence for over a month.
When I reached out again, the only response I received was a call from Manon, during which she said I was testing her patience. She went on to say, “We don’t talk about our struggles,” and that everyone is going through something, including their business, the passing of her parents (which I had already expressed condolences), and the struggles of the kids, my sister, and grandmother.
I’m not minimizing anyone’s pain. But what I shared with them wasn’t meant to be a competition. It was a moment of honesty, a vulnerable attempt to be heard by my own father.
That attempt was met with dismissal, coldness, and judgment.
Michael's lack of response and Manon’s reaction made it painfully clear where I stand in their lives.
Michael has shown care and effort for others, but I've rarely been on the receiving end of it. I’ve spent my entire life feeling like an afterthought to him. I do believe he tried to be the best version of a father that he could be, but the truth is that version has rarely included me, only others.
I’m not saying this to be cruel. I’m saying it because I’ve carried the emotional weight of this relationship for far too long, and I can’t do it anymore.
I am not okay.
I needed my Dad, and instead, I was treated as a burden.
That moment clarified everything.
I had reached out as a son in pain. And I was treated as a problem.
That hope I carried since childhood, for presence, for care, deserved better than silence.
So this is my closure.
Michael and Manon, I asked for help. I was vulnerable. I needed a father. And I was treated like an inconvenience.
I am no longer reaching out.
You’ve lost your chance to be the father and stepmother I needed.
I hope your own struggles improve. But I am done.
– Peter
To Those Who Understand This Pain
If you’ve carried pain like this, the kind that never got seen or validated, I want you to know you’re not alone.
Closure doesn’t always come from the people who hurt us. Sometimes it has to come from within.
This is mine.
What does yours look like?
*This post is a personal reflection about my experience. It’s not meant to blame or attack anyone, but rather to process things I’ve carried for far too long. I’m sharing it because silence has only hurt me more, and telling the truth, kindly but honestly, is how I begin to heal.
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