Did My Father Hide A Huge Secret From Me? | KARAMO

3 years ago, I lost my father to dementia. I go, we have a service. When he passed away in July due to COVID, it was just hard because he was military. So he got married military. So we get to the funeral. We're going to lead you up to the day of the funeral. So I park my car. And as I park my car, another car parked right next to me. What I didn't know was it was Hope. So we get inside the funeral home. Well, my family's just a little bit too comfortable with her presence, which kind of piqued the flag.

Yeah.

You know, people—

'Cause no one's like questioning, "Who is this?" Everyone's like—

So, you know, they're like, "Well, hey, where's Nay at?" "Oh, hey, Nay, good to see you." And, you know, Hope is just like, "I'm his other daughter." Mm. You a who and a what? "Now I told you to leave that alone. We still gonna see what Dana say." Okay. So, you know, I just said, "Please stop, please stop." While we were being introduced at the funeral, you know, my grandmother was like, "Nay, this is Hope." My name is Charlotte Renee. So she was like, "Nay, this is Hope. This your sister Hope. Hope, this is Nay." We'll see what Dana say.

Okay.

Uh-uh, no, we not doing that because You just kind of, I can't do that.

Yeah.

So moving forward, she asked for my number. I did not really want to give it to her, but I did. Sent me a nice text message letting me know that she—

By the way, in case none of y'all were catching, every time she said Dana, she talking about DNA.

Oh, sorry, y'all.

I was gonna make sure y'all caught that. I was following you. You was like, let's see what Dana say, DNA.

So she was like, I'll give you all the space that you need. She was really nice. It's never ever been anything aggressive. My thing is, the reason this is so important to me is because you just kind of got in my lap.

And especially on a hard day where you're grieving, it's hard to first of all deal with a funeral, to deal with someone passing, and then to receive information like that probably threw you off.

It threw me off.

Yeah.

It was a slap in the face. That was definitely a slap in the face to me. And I say that because of the type of relationship that me and my father had.

What was your relationship with your father?

It was good. I've always had my dad there, but by the time I moved in '11 to '13, you know, now it's, I'm in these streets, I'm in LA, I'm California bound, you know? So I just kind of got caught up in some things and doing some things.

My producers told me y'all finally did get close.

We did.

When was that?

So me and my father finally got close when I went to prison.

Okay.

I was sentenced to federal prison for drugs. And when I got sentenced to prison, I don't know, something just said call him.

How long were you in prison for?

Almost 10 years.

10 years. And during that time, was he writing you, communicating with you?

Oh yeah. So I have letters, like I received mail every day.

Oh wow.

Every day.

Every day.

Every day. All envelopes were different. No two envelopes are the same.

Is that what they, 'cause behind you I see they put something. Are these all the letters?

These ain't even half of it. But it was just newspaper articles, you name it. He just wanted to keep me informed on what's going on.

Yeah.

In the world.

He's like, get your mind off of, I mean, and crossword puzzles in that cell?

Man, listen, I had to do the Reader's Digest, you know, the little word thing in the Reader's Digest. But I was just trying to find, he didn't care what it was. He would pick up any piece of paper and just write wherever he's at. He just, if he's sitting there waiting, he'll write.

Do you feel, you told my producers that you feel like he got you through jail.

He did.

Yeah, but when you got out, you were still close.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Still close. That's when I found out he was really getting sick 'cause he was start forgetting stuff. So I was like, Dad, I just told you this last night. I know, Charlie, I forgot, I forgot, I forgot. So I didn't think nothing of it. And my grandmother, I had a phone call, I had a talk with her and she said, your dad's sick. And that's when she stated that he has dementia.

Had your father mentioned at all anything about having another child?

Nope.

Not one conversation about it?

Never. It was just me and my, I always thought it was just me and my brother.

Do you think your father knew? Why don't you think he told you?

They said I'm crazy, but I got good sense. But again, they just probably didn't know how I was gonna react. And he told my grandmother something like, "Yeah, I don't know, she probably ain't gonna get over this one," or whatever. But again, I wanna know.

But you don't believe Hope is your sister?

She can be, there's a possibility, but that's between her and what we got going on. That's what we're gonna find out today.

Dana. Dana. We hoping Dana is what you saying.

Yes, right.

Okay.

But honestly, I don't treat her as if she's not, but I don't treat her as if she's my, 'cause I don't know and I want it to be my choice.

Got it.

So if we are not, related, then let it be my choice to carry on with the friendship or the relationship. But don't just tell me she yours and I'm just supposed to take that. I'm not gonna take that, so.

Are you the only one who hasn't embraced her into the family? Only one?

Okay. I mean, I've embraced her.

I get it.

But I wanna know. So I mean, my brother is cool with it. My mom, she's, everybody's, Everybody living their own life. They out here lifin'. So this ain't really important to them, but it's important to me.

Yes, I get that. Whether she's your sister or not, do you think these results are gonna bring you closure?

I think they'll bring me some type of comfort, if that makes sense. I'm not gonna even say closure because I just feel it really wasn't a major thing, but it was one of them, I have to know.

Does your brother think that that's his sister? Hope is his sister?

He say if she is, she is. If she ain't, she ain't.

So truth be told, it seemed like everybody in the family doesn't have any information, but they're just going along with it. And it makes sense because I'm assuming your brother found out at the same time during the funeral when you found out.

My brother found out.

So your brother got it in this box as well. So he's just like, oh, it is what it is because no one is really over here.

He let her love on you.

Got it, got it. I understand.

She wanna be our sister. Let her be our sister.

I understand, I understand. Yeah. Well listen, but before we bring out Hope, let's hear some of her story.

I grew up not knowing who my dad was. My mother was a young teen when she had me. I asked my mother who my father was and she never was clear or direct of who he was. She never told me the truth. When I was in my 40s, I told my aunt that I was gonna try and find my dad on my own. Within 3 days, she gave me his contact information. I had been asking for years, for a very long time, and they just kept not answering the question. So I was very angry that they knew where he was all along. Upon first meeting my dad for the first time, he looked me in my face and told me that he knew that I was his child. For the next 5 years, my father and I were able to develop a beautiful relationship. Before my father died, he promised me that he would tell Charlotte about me. He never got the chance. He passed away. I took the DNA test to prove that Charlotte and I are sisters. That way, our father's legacy can live on through the both of us. I believe he was gonna tell her because our last visit I told him, I said, "Pop, you gotta tell her before we meet like this because I saw it coming." Yeah. Because he was getting sick.

How old were you when you finally met him?

I was 46, 45.

Okay, got it.

I met him in 2015.

2015, and then he died in 2020?

Yes.

Okay, so you only knew him for about 5 years, so it wasn't like you, had a relationship of 10, 15, 20 years.

No.

Mm-hmm. And Hope, your father told you about Charlotte, but she never knew about you, obviously.

No.

Yeah.

I learned about them through a family member.

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

And I should've learned about her through all this mail.

Yeah.

What, why?

Yeah.

You had so much time to tell me. Yeah. Why? I mean, she didn't do nothing. She couldn't do nothing. She ain't know nothing.

Yeah.

But again, when you do find out, you know, I feel he probably knew she existed.

'Cause you two are like 6 months apart.

We're 6 months apart. My birthday's in December, hers is June. My birthday's December 31st, hers is June 21st.

Oh wow, yeah. What was it like for you at that funeral? Because I understand your feelings, but I wanna know your feelings too.

Extremely awkward.

Yeah.

As the service starts, my grandmother stops the service and she's looking around, "Hope, Hope, baby, where are you? Where is Hope?" And everybody looking at her like, "Who are you talking about?" Who Hope?

Yeah.

So she finally went to walking and then she saw me. She said, "Come on up here." She said, "'Cause you Rodney's daughter too and you need to be up here with us." Mm.

Mm. That I didn't know. That one I didn't know.

On her face, it's not funny, but the look on her face.

No, I get it, yeah.

And now I hear kind of like whispers behind me like, "Who is that?

Where'd she come from?" Yeah.

"Who taught her that?" Did you know that she was trying to respect your space and stand in the back?

I did.

Okay.

And she told me.

Yeah, because that says a lot. After the fact.

That says a lot.

Yeah, I know, but that says a lot about who you are, honestly.

Yeah, that's true.

Because you could have came in there and been like, "Nope, I'm doing this, I'm doing that, I'm sitting right here," I don't think she tried to. Someone else brought her in and made it a situation, you know? Well, I think it's time for this truth to be revealed. There's no more time than the present. In this envelope is the DNA truth. It says if Hope is your sister or not. As I tell everybody, this is not my truth to open. This is only your truth to open.

Hope is your biological sister.

Now I can say— now I can say your big sister told you. I'm glad. I'm so glad.

I feel better.

You feel better?

I feel better.

Good. Y'all got me emotional over here. I was in my head praying for this to be, for y'all to be sitters.

We met last night for drink and dinner. And during this, we just realized we had so many similarities.

Yeah.

There's no way in the world you can't be my sister. I mean, who fights over celery sticks? We both love celery.

My best guess is I think this will make things better. I think it'll, you know, some of the things that I was thinking about before, it will help me out a lot in regards to if I don't talk to you, she just fine, I'll talk to her later. So I'm opposed to feeling forced to talk to you because I really didn't know, or I don't talk to you 'cause I'm like, I don't know if that's my sister or not, but now, that we have the results that we came here for. Thank you.

You're welcome. And thank you so much.

I have to tell you this because I know that you've made peace and that you've had some time and clarity in this. I can see that you're still dealing with this. And I can tell immediately that part of not only you grieving your father passing, you're also dealing with in your mind what probably feels very true to be betrayal.

Yeah.

And because in your mind it's like, In my mind, he knew.

He knew about it before he got sick, sick where he couldn't talk or couldn't nothing. He knew this.

I got it. I'm gonna tell you this. I think the thing that you gotta think about when it comes to grieving for you is focus on it from an angle of anger because there's still a piece of you that's angry at your father and rightfully so. Rightfully so. We're never gonna take that away from you. And you have the same rightfully so for all the years you missed to have been angry. I think what we have to understand is that we never know why people make the decisions they make. It didn't take away from the love he had for you. It didn't take away from how he felt. And again, you have to process that. But I wanna leave you with something at least so that you can go on that path to be able to process it. He wasn't trying to betray you. There was no intention behind that. And as I talk about on this show, intention versus impact, I know how it impacted you to feel like he betrayed you, made you angry. But I'm sure it wasn't his intention.

And I'm still angry.

Yeah.

And I just want you to know, in our conversations about you, you was his world, okay? I wish I could've got some of that love, but the love I did get from him, it was very good. So I can imagine how good of a life you had with him.

I'm gonna tell you this, part of that anger, this connection is going to help heal that anger. Because even her being able to fill in gaps of what they were talking about, I could even see the relief right there of you knowing how he felt. And what is going to happen is inadvertently you're gonna fill in gaps for her. I know that your father is gone and you're left with these letters, but you're also left with hope.

I love you too.

I'm so happy for y'all. You got your choice now. You're making the right choice and you got your facts and I wish y'all the best of luck.

Thank you.

Seriously, I really do.

I wish her the best of luck.