Submission 149

Dear Dad

I lost you when I was too young to comprehend why you were gone. A seven year old girl had to grow up too fast and knew too much darkness way too young. The word suicide shouldn’t have meant anything to me, but it meant everything. I felt abandoned, lost and not enough before I had the words to express that. But I want you to know that I understand and I’m not angry anymore.

In your goodbye you called me your darling baby, you told me to look after mummy and that the fairies would look after you. Well, I want you to know that your baby is okay and we will always look after each other. I hope the fairies told you everything that I wish I could have said myself. The hurt of losing you cast a shadow over my whole life, but I will always keep fighting. It’s been a long hard road dad but I’m still here, I’ve worked out how to feel and love and live. I wish you could have done the same.

We remember, love and miss you with all our hearts, always and forever.

I feel sad at the time we wasted, the times I could and should have been gentler with you. I feel sad that you won’t be around to experience life because you were so full of life until it all got hard and even then, you still kept your wicked sense of humour. You kept that right till the end, even in the letters you left.

I want you to know that even though I’m not the same person as I was before, I’m doing okay, actually most days I’m doing good. Because I know you wouldn’t want me to be sad, to make my world small or shut down. So instead, I’m learning to live with my new scars, and I think that’s the only way forward. Because nothing can change what has happened, nothing can take us back in time. You are no longer with us, and I hope you are at peace even though I find that hard to accept.

In the days leading up after your death I went back home, I planned your memorial, I packed up your flat, I took care of the admin, because no one tells you how much admin there is in death, and it was okay because I wouldn’t have wanted anyone else to do it. I wouldn’t have wanted anyone else to have gone through your flat and decided what had value and what did not. I think you would have found it ironic, me packing it up, God knows how you packed our house up on your own because your little flat took nearly three weeks, Harry Styles on repeat. I now can’t listen to that album without picturing your flat and the boxes it took to pack it all away.

I want you to know that I miss you constantly, your absence hums in the background, sometimes it hums louder, and I have to take a minute, other times it’s so soft I forget what has happened and that worries me. It worries me that after this monumental experience that life gets back on track, that people start to forget and move on, but if we didn’t then what would happen if it were always so loud, I think it would be too much.

Mom, I love you, I always will. This Christmas you will be missed, you will always be missed – I love you.