As the world celebrates Father’s Day, I’m reminded—painfully—of the man I had called “Daddy” for all 26 years of my life, telling me that he was not my father… and that he would not be walking me down the aisle.
At first, I thought it was a cruel joke.
It wasn’t.
Here’s how the truth slowly came apart:
I am the youngest child in my family, with three siblings who all shared our family surname. We also had someone we called “Uncle”—Franklin. He was said to be my mum’s childhood friend. The story goes that they grew up on the same street, and after he lost his parents, my grandmother took him in and raised him like her own.
But curiously, Franklin was my middle name; middle name to my siblings as well. My mum told me she gave us his name to honour him.
My parents separated when I was still in secondary school. My dad relocated abroad, and over time, contact with him faded. We didn’t really need him—Mum more than filled the gap. She was both mother and father, and Uncle Franklin stepped in for the traditional “dad duties.”
I was grateful to have Uncle Franklin, I truly was—but deep down, I still longed for a connection with my father. So, two years before my wedding, I decided to rebuild that relationship.
I found him on Facebook and began to build a relationship with him.
I told him that whatever happened between him and Mum was their business. I just wanted to know him, to reach out—not for money, not for explanations, just for the relationship. He agreed. We started talking, calling, emailing, texting on WhatsApp.
At first, I kept all of these from my mum, this is because, hitherto, anytime Dad came up in conversation, she reacted intensely. To avoid upsetting her, we simply stopped speaking about him.
But with wedding plans underway, my fiancé and I had begun discussing the possibility of my father walking me down the aisle. It was a dream I quietly held onto. I didn’t tell my mum—I wanted to be sure my dad was truly on board first. He knew about my fiancé, the wedding plans—he was part of my life again, in small but meaningful ways.
And so, I hoped. Naively.
He never gave me any reason to doubt him. He came across as genuinely enthusiastic, happy that we had reconnected. He even asked after my siblings, showing interest in the life he had been absent from.
I never asked him for money, and honestly, I didn’t need it. Still, I had a sense that if I did, he would have obliged—he offered a few times to pay for things. But after being away for so long, it felt wrong to let him buy his way back into my life. Do you understand what I mean? I wanted a relationship, not reparations.
Uncle Franklin, on the other hand… he was just there. I didn’t dislike him, but I didn’t feel I needed him. Sure, he stepped in for things—school events, PTA meetings—when Mum couldn’t make it. But I saw him as nothing more than an uncle who had simply become part of the scenery of my life. Not a father. I longed for mine.
About six months before the wedding, I finally told my mum I had been speaking to my dad—and that I wanted him to walk me down the aisle.
She was furious.
“Over my dead body,” she said.
I pleaded with her: “Mum, I’ve been in touch with Dad. He wants to walk me down the aisle. Please, can’t you just set aside the past for my sake?”
But she wouldn’t hear it. She refused flat-out.
I was stunned. I begged my older siblings to step in, to talk to her. Nothing changed. So I reached out to her family, hoping maybe someone could talk sense into her. And that’s when the truth began to unfold.
All this time, I had kept my dad in the loop. I told him there was resistance from my mum, but I didn’t yet know the depths of it. From my mum’s point of view, it made perfect sense that Uncle Franklin would walk me down the aisle. After all, my biological father had been out of the picture for years. As far as she was concerned, he didn’t even know I was getting married.
So when I told her that not only had I reconnected with him, but that I wanted him at the altar, her reaction shocked me.
Her relatives tried to intervene, asking her to reconsider. I figured she was bitter—understandably so. She raised us alone, paid the bills, and ensured we had an education. Dad disappeared. Maybe Uncle Franklin helped financially too, I don’t know—Mum never said.
But the tension between us grew unbearable. Three weeks to the wedding, we could barely look at each other.
I resented her. All I wanted was this one thing—for my father to walk me down the aisle. And she refused to give it. It started to sour everything—the dress, the flowers, the excitement. All of it.
To her, I was an ungrateful daughter. To me, she was denying me closure, denying me a father’s blessing on the day I needed it most.
When I realised my mum wasn’t going to budge, I went to her late one night—tears streaming down my face—begging her to forgive my dad, even if just for a few hours, so he could be at my wedding.
That’s when it happened.
She broke down. And in a voice shaking with tears, she told me that the man I had called “Dad” all my life… was not my father.
Uncle Franklin was.
Wait—what?
She said she had never had children with the man I’d known as my dad. That all four of us—myself and my three siblings—were fathered by Uncle Franklin.
I couldn’t believe it. Who does that?
How do you lie to your grown children? I was 26. My eldest sibling is 38, the next 35, and the third-born is 30. For years, we lived under the roof of a man who wasn’t our father, and she never said a word.
I didn’t know whether to scream or to hate her. But one thing was clear: the secret stopped with me. I told her I was going to tell my siblings. She pleaded with me not to. But it was too late.
That very night, I called them.
They all came to Mum’s house, shocked. Completely blindsided. My eldest sibling outright refused to believe it. Denial can be loud when the truth comes in like a flood.
Three days later—it was a weekend—Uncle Franklin showed up. Our father. Our actual father.
He said he was sorry. That he didn’t know how to tell us. That he never meant for this to happen like this.
But I couldn’t see a “sorry” in any of it.
It felt like a betrayal from everyone. My entire life had been built on a lie.
I called the man I’d grown up calling Daddy and asked him if he’d known we weren’t his. After a long pause, he quietly said, yes—he knew. That was why he left. And since our mum never told us, he didn’t think it was his place to say anything.
How? How were they all able to live with this? What kind of people do this?
After that, I couldn’t go ahead with the wedding. How could I?
This is the kind of thing your in-laws will use against you in years to come…even your spouse. It’s a shame I will be forced to defend, to fight my way out every time someone as much as suggests it.
And now, as I sit with all of this—my mother and I haven’t spoken in almost a year. I haven’t been able to find the words. My siblings, they seem to have moved on. They visit her. Laugh with her. Carry on as though nothing ever happened.
But I can’t. Not now. Maybe not ever.
I am not judging the reason she did what she did, I am judging her for not telling us when we became adults.
(Series written and edited by Peju Akande and based on true stories)