Despite his father being absent the majority of his life, Usher decided to reconnect with him later in 2007. But his mother didn’t support the decision, and the “OMG” singer opened up to the Mirror about his conflicted emotions, saying, “She never wanted me to meet my dad but as a man I had to make my own decision. What if he died and I never got the chance to meet him?” He ultimately put aside his past resentment, admitting, “I was happy that I did, happy that I got closure, happy that I forgave him for not being there and that I knew he really did love me.”
The reunion was short-lived, however, due to his father being in the hospital at the time due to liver failure. The Grammy award-winning artist told Oprah he decided to pay for his father’s liver transplant, but he ended up suffering complications during the procedure and went into a coma. “The hardest part of this story is the fact that, within the process of making the decision of whether my father lives or dies, if they take him off of the [breathing] machine, my son is across town just being born.”
Usher made it back to his father’s side before he passed away, getting the closure he had hoped for. “I remember showing a picture of my son to my father, who was unconscious, saying ‘Look at this, this is Usher. This is the continuation of us,'” he told the Daily Mail.
