Quick answer
Keep the old friendships, including your father's. When trouble comes, proximity matters more than blood, and the verse says so plainly.
Read both lines
Three lines, and the third is the one that startles. This book is not sentimental about family and here it says outright that a neighbor at hand beats a brother at a distance, in the specific setting of the day of your calamity, the moment when help has to be near to be help at all.
The middle line is the sharpest. It does not say your brother will refuse you; it says do not go, which assumes the reader's first instinct would be to go. The reasoning is practical rather than bitter: distance is distance, and a relationship that has to be traveled to is not available at the hour it is needed. That is also why the first line matters. Friendships kept in the ordinary years, including inherited ones, are what make a neighbor near.
Related: Proverbs 18:24 · Proverbs 17:17 · Proverbs 27:8 · Proverbs 19:7
New King James Version®, Copyright © 1982, Thomas Nelson. All rights reserved. Full copyright information. Scripture provided by API.Bible.
Go Deeper
If this verse has been used to put weight on you that it was never carrying, ask about it directly.