Submission 90

Dear Dad,

The last time we spoke you knew you were going to be a Grandpa but you couldn’t hold on long enough to meet your beautiful granddaughter.

Your mind had already started to go dangerously wrong.

I still wonder when I last actually saw you, my loving, gentle, caring dad. In the last few weeks you were a shell of the man you’d once been. Your eyes weren’t yours, your eyes were crazy. Your words, your thoughts were jumbled, your speech driven and fast.

You still knew who I was yet I didn’t recognise the man you’d become.

Despite all of that I never imagined what was to come. More than 15 years on I try to remember more of the gentle, kind caring Dad you were. I wistfully think about what an amazing grandpa you could have been to Megan and Charlie. I tell them about the fun times, the sledging, the rockets, the rose garden and the bear hugs. They think they would have loved you too.

I love you Dad and miss you. I now know it wasn’t your fault, your brain just went terribly wrong.

Sarah xx