Thanks to everyone who’s shared their thoughts…
My “dad” was also an absentee. Mom and I lived with him for a while and it was a miserable experience. In short him and I did not get along. He got sick and requested I visit him so he could make amends after 15 years of him being a ghost. I refused and told my Aunt, his sister who I am close with, that I would never give him the satisfaction of apologizing to me and allow him to feel better about treating my mother and I so awfully. It wasn't even adversarial in nature; he chose his path and I wasn’t in it. He lost out and I'm confident I'm better off not having him around.
On the mother fuck cancer subject I wholeheartedly agree. Took me a while to post this but I had the displeasure of watching my ex’s brother pass from brain cancer. He was taking an experimental drug, 714-X, at the time that was working to shrink his tumor from softball size to a golf ball but he grew tired of injecting it, tapped out and let it take him. I’ve had Aunts, Uncles and co-workers pass from cancer but I didn’t watch it progress like his. He was 6'+ 270 pounds when I met him and only 120 lbs. when he passed. I was very hard to wrap my head around.