It’s taken me a while to write this. I wanted to take the time to tell you a little about my dad, I just didn’t think I’d be writing this so soon. In August, just five short months after my mum passed and I wrote about her, my dad passed away. He was never the same after mum died and on the way to the hospital he kept kissing his wedding ring, ready to go and join her. It’s been a tough year.

If anyone ever asks me about my dad the first thing I mention is always his sense of humour. He was always lovably daft. I remember as a child when he was making himself a cup of tea and I’d shout into the kitchen from the living room, “Can I have a cup?” he’d say yes, and then proceed to come out with his tea and an empty cup for me. “Well, you didn’t say you wanted anything in it.” Then off I’d go to make my own cuppa!

Or how about the life lessons our dads teach us when we’re in our formative years? Like when mum would’ve asked him to do some dusting around the house while she was out, and he’d pull me aside to show me which ornaments to swap about into the wrong places to make it look like he’d done it. Dad’s sense of humour was wonderful and I remember growing up and discovering stand up comedy through him too with the likes of Billy Connelly and Dave Allen, and watching Married with Children together.

It’s strange the random memories that come back when we lose someone we love, and how previously forgotten childhood memories can resurface, clear as crystal in our minds. I remember being very, very young and we lived at the bottom of a hill. My dad owned a motorbike back then and when he came home from work he’d always stop at the top of the hill and wait for me to come running out of the house and all the way up to him so I could ride down on his back. I can see that in my mind as if it were yesterday, something I hadn’t thought of in decades.

As I approach the first Christmas without them I can hear their voices telling me to celebrate and enjoy my favourite time of the year. I’ll make sure I do, in their honour. In fact, this festive season I’ll be partaking in a certain hobby for the first time since childhood, one which my dad and I enjoyed together at times. When I was a kid he sourced a huge wooden board for my Hornby trains and painted it with grass, rivers and roads. I look forward to opening my first model train set in about 30 years this Christmas and thinking about how much dad would’ve been right there with me enjoying it.

My mum and dad split just after I left high school and I didn’t see him for many years. I was in my 30s when he moved back to our hometown and I went to visit him, happy with the news they were talking and had become friends again. They seemed so genuinely happy. I shouldn’t have been surprised then when my dad phoned me one day asking if I had any use of some old TV equipment at mum’s apartment. I asked why and he said he needed to make room for his stuff. I’d no idea they’d even got back together! That was a very happy day.

Dad hadn’t been well for some time at the home where he’d spent the last few years. However, the last time I saw him he was in good form and had seemed to perk up towards the end. In hindsight it was like he knew he was going to see mum again soon. I’ve never understood that whole ‘They’re no longer in pain’ thing people say. I do now, and I’m happy he’s at peace and the two of them are together again.

My mum and dad both watch over me now from atop my bookshelf in this photo, the same one I showed you earlier in the year. It was the last one I ever took of the three of us together because I so rarely take photos of myself. I know I’ll see them again. Although the wait will be agonising I’ll never stop thinking about them and how they raised me. I hope I can make both of them proud.

To end with, here’s a photo my dad took on a family holiday to the Isle of Man back in 1985. He found the licence plate so hilarious he just had to take a picture of it, which he gave to me when we got them developed. I found it while looking for photos of him and it made me laugh so hard remembering him in that moment!

Love you dad. ❤️

PERSONAL POSTS

A few weeks ago I lost my mum. It was cancer, as it always seems to be these days. I was with her on Christmas Eve 2019 when she was given her diagnosis, when the doctor told her he couldn’t give her any timeframe other than to say it could be six-to-twelve months or it could be years. She passed away over four years later and lived her best life in that time, surrounded by friends and family, always so giving to everyone she loved.

I can still remember my mum rolling her eyes at some of the things she’d see in my OiNK comics and laughing over Christmas 1987 as I showed the cheeky front and back covers of the OiNK Book to every one of her friends that visited over the holidays. She always encouraged my reading. While she may have complained when another comic came along that I wanted to collect, later in life she said she’d always been so happy I was asking for comics instead of sweets every time we went to the shops.

My comics really helped my reading comprehension as a kid and mum encouraged me to read more and more, always filling my stocking every Christmas with books from The Railway Series and always happy (though she’d quibble to me at the time) to give me money to buy comics and computer magazines throughout my younger and teen years.

In 1999, when I decided to forego a full-time job and go back to college to study media and writing she didn’t hesitate to back me, knowing that I was still trying to work out what I wanted to do with my life. Even if she didn’t always agree with decisions I made in that regard, the most important thing for my mum was that I was happy and following my heart. Every new job I tried she was right behind me. I was in my 40s before I realised what I wanted to do and my mum was still encouraging me.

I could wax lyrical with memory upon memory of growing up with my mum but where do you even begin choosing which ones to write about? Instead, I wanted to focus on those associated with my writing and thus this very website; how she was always there to help when times got hard, always there to check that I was still happy, always there to make sure I wasn’t giving up on my dreams, always there to spur me on and let me know she wanted me to succeed.

It breaks my heart that it’s only now that things are developing the way I wanted them to, that she’ll never see what happens next. After talking to her so much about it over the years, the fact I won’t be able to share any of these things with my mum seems so unfair. Without her I’d have given up by now; I simply wouldn’t have been able to get to this stage without her help and support. I wish she was still here to share this with me.

While I’m sure my friends are right when they reassuringly tell me my mum was always proud of me, I feel her spirit is pushing me on and I’m working hard to make her proud of what I’ll achieve. I look at her photo in my living room from my cousin’s wedding in 2015 and I tell her what I’m finally working on and I know she’d be so happy. (This is the last photo taken of us together in fact. I always take photos of others but so rarely do I put myself in them! This has made me realise I have to correct that.)

Just you watch, mum!

If you’re lucky enough to still have your parents in this world with you make sure you phone them, visit them, and tell them you love them. You just never know when the last time will be the last time.

Love you mum. ❤️

PERSONAL POSTS