On June 28, 2026 Uncle Billy called to inform me that my father, Jefferson Harold Wheaton had passed away. He was 95-years old.

I was never very close to my father. I still recall the day in the late spring of 1963 that he came to the house to have a talk with me, his 7-year old son. He said he was leaving and the words he said that I will never forget, "You're the man of this house now". 
 
It wasn't long after my parents separated that they filed for divorce, which was decreed about a year later. No sooner than the ink had dried on the divorce decree, my father was remarried to the woman he would stay with for more than 50-years, my step-mother Penny.
 
Time was not kind to our relationship as father and son. He was a busy police officer at the Tampa Police Department. He had that job for 22 years. He moonlighted as a security guard at one of the local Winn Dixie grocery stores. He was raising another woman's child and frankly didn't have time for me in his life.

After I was grown and had established myself in the music industry I would hear from Pop, which was the name he used when sending the occasional birthday or Christmas card. That reached a sort of climax between 1982 and 1985. Karen and I had been married in August 1981 and not long after, we were invited to join Jimmy Swaggart's Crusade Team. During those years Pop was living in Deer Park, Texas with Penny. He had started attending church at Lakewood Assembly, which at that time was still pastored by Joel Osteen's father, John Osteen. I think Pop might have been a little starry-eyed in those days as he seemed impressed at our perceived success.
 
Some time in 1982 or perhaps early 1983, Pop and Penny came to Baton Rouge to Swaggart's church, Family Worship Center to visit and to see us with Swaggart's Crusade Team on a Sunday morning. I guess nobody explained to Jimmy Swaggart that Penny was not my mother, a fact to which I was probably over sensitive. After we played the morning worship service and just before Jimmy was to deliver his sermon, he greeted my father from the stage saying that Karen and I were hosting the special guests of my father and mother. Without even thinking, I blurted out loud, "That's not my mother, that's his wife". Needless to say, it was an embarrassing moment that serves to illustrate the ill will I had toward my father for having abandoned us so early in our lives.
 
Segue to 1985 and we visited Pop and Penny in the autumn of 1985 where we performed at John Osteen's Lakewood church. Little did I know it then, but Karen got pregnant with our youngest daughter around that same time. Our Lindsey was born in July 1986. On the last night of our stay and Pop and Penny's house, me and Pop stayed up all night until 5AM the next morning talking about all the things that had transpired from me at age 7 to the age of 30 which I had attained in September of 1985.
 
That all nighter was mostly about me demanding answers with a great deal of me telling him how that man my mother had married as my step-father had sexually abused me from the time I was 9-years old until I was about 12. Pop denied knowing and really seemed not to care that this had happened to me at all. When I pushed harder saying that he was a police officer and that I wanted him to come in guns blazing, superman cape and all to rescue me from this horrible man, his only reply was, "I was busy, son. I had another family and I was working two jobs". 
 
Well, almost needless to say, but I left Pop's house later that morning never to return. In fact, from that time until 2016 we had almost no contact. There was a period between 2005 and 2016 that we had zero contact.
 
I have written in other articles the drama that occurred in my youngest daughter's life. She and her husband were separated between 2014 and early 2016. As a result of that drama , I ended up back in contact with Pop. Most of our talks centered around my daughters and my relationship, or lack of relationship with them. I was estranged from them after the near divorce between my youngest daughter and her husband.  One of the stipulations upon her return to her husband in 2016 was that she could never contact me again. This was the punishment decreed on me because I had believed my daughter's grievances against her husband, and knew that she had been abused by both him and the cult that her mother's ministry had become. So much for the return of the Prodigal Daughter, but that is another story.
 
So without ever saying so, Pop and I agreed to let bygones be bygones. It was not like we set out to heal our broken relationship. It was more like two people who had no other living family. Momma had passed away in March of 2010. My half-sister Denyse passed in July 2015 and not long after Pop and I had again established a 'talking' relationship, Doreen, my sister and my father's only other biological child passed away in October 2022. Unfortunately, Doreen passed without ever being reconciled to Pop.
 
The return to a talking relationship resulted in Pop paying a visit to my home in August 2021. He spent several days with us here in our home in a northwest Atlanta suburb. He was 90-years old at the time and drove alone from Tampa to Atlanta. After he left my house he drove to East Texas where he attended the passing and funeral of one of his younger siblings, my Uncle Adam. During his stay at my house, Pop and I had opportunities to talk it all out. He finally admitted to some of the things I already knew were true about him, but the most important reveal was that he had started reading his Bible again.
 
Not long after Pop left our house I became very sick with Covid 19, the dreaded Delta variant. I was hospitalized on September 2nd and remained in the hospital for 23-days finally being released on my birthday, September 25, 2021. There were some dark days while in that hospital absolutely alone. Nobody was allowed to visit Covid patients at that time. During that hospital stay the LORD God gave me opportunity to repent, listen to His Word and contemplate my own life. It was then that  I decided once and for all to put into practice what my Christian upbringing had always taught me... you are never more like Christ than when you are forgiving.
 
I purposed in my heart that from that time forward that I would seek opportunity to honor my father. Not because he deserved it. Not because he asked forgiveness, because he didn't. It was that teaching of Christ that compels us to do. If the LORD God, through Jesus Christ can forgive the many mean, hateful, ugly and atrocious sins I have committed, then I can forgive my father for his failures.

Since 2021 I have made it a point to stay in touch. It's not been calling every week,, but on the big occasions like his birthday, Father's Day, Christmas and the random calls. I made it a point to send him and his brother, my Uncle Billy, some Omaha Steaks every Christmas just so I would know they had something good to eat.
 
From the time Pop arrived back at home in September of 2021 until he passed away, his mind started going away. I noticed when we talked that he told the same stories from his law enforcement days over and again. Then, it became progressively more difficult for him to talk on the phone to the point around February of this year, his birthday, that he was unable to talk at all.
 
I called again on Father's Day. Uncle Billy told me that his medical situation was growing worse by the day. He was unable to walk or do the basic necessities of caring for himself. Uncle Billy, or his son, my first cousin Michael had to do everything for him. 
 
Pop passed on Sunday, one week after Father's Day 2026. Uncle Billy said that he got up at 4AM that morning.  He fixed some breakfast for Pop, but although he was usually a good eater he didn't eat much breakfast. When the next meal time rolled around Uncle Billy pulled out some Omaha Steaks from this past Christmas and prepared that for lunch. But again, Pop didn't want very much to eat. Some time after 4 that afternoon Uncle Billy was trying to ascertain how Pop was feeling, but he was not very responsive. The only thing he could communicate was that he wanted Michael and Uncle Billy to hold his hands, which they did.
 
Michael had to leave for work so Uncle Billy was staying there alone after 4PM when Pop really got distressed. Emergency services was called and the operator asked if Pop was breathing. On instructions from the 911 operator Uncle Billy laid Pop flat on the floor, but it was already too late. Pop's heart had given out between the chair and the floor. Emergency services, their headquarters being only a few blocks away from the house, was there in seconds, but Pop was gone. His final wishes to be cremated and without a memorial service have been honored.
 
As I have contemplated my father's life and our relationship I have realized the although he was largely absent my father had a real God centered purpose. In that, God determined how I would behave once I got over my youthful arrogance and anger. As it turns out, this was never about me and the relationship with me and my biological father. It was about my relationship with the Father, God. Pop had his own relationship with God to work out. I think that might have turned out better than might have been expected.
 
In the words of Uncle Billy's oldest son, Johnny Ray, our fathers were hard men. They were peas in a pod, but each could only see the faults of the other. They would have been shocked to hear that they were of an ilk. They loved each other as brothers but agreed on nothing else. Hard minded men; unwavering in their sense of rightness. Their capes torn and stained. 
 
Pop is gone. He didn't die alone. His purpose in my life has been fulfilled. I am a better man than might have been expected... because of him.