It Has Been Five Months

Dad - some thoughts written over the fifth month without you

The shower just broke. I only replaced it the other week. Nearly pushed me to the edge. It’s ridiculous. It’s a fucking shower, and I’m sobbing on my bed, because it’s not about the shower at all, is it.

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I keep glimpsing you out of the corner of my eye. 

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We had pasties today and laughed when we remembered eating pasties in Padstow with you last year. 

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Sometimes I wonder if you’re really gone. When I look at photos of you and see you laughing, with that twinkle in your eye. How does someone with so much life in them suddenly stop being here?

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I only really cry when everything is quiet. 

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I went in the sea today. It was so cold. I remembered what you said about relaxing your muscles when it’s cold and it was so much more manageable. I went up to my neck. Standing there in the cold sea, my limbs going numb, with the waves gently rocking me, was so soothing. Thank you for helping me to do that. 

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I talked about you with a couple of people today. Both times I was telling stories about you, good memories, and I started to cry. It’s funny - people think they’ve made me sad, but I was already sad. They’ve actually allowed me to feel my feelings and I’m grateful for that. And being able to speak about you is so good. 

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I finished The Satsuma Complex today. I wish you’d read it when I bought it for you, instead of leaving it and not finishing it before you died. Rude. I wish I could have borrowed it off you and we could have talked about it when I returned it. Instead, I’m sat here sobbing and hugging a book that was meant to be yours forever, with my birthday wishes to you written in the front. I miss you so much!

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I miss how fun you are. No one else is as fun. It’s truly miserable without you. 

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I’m tired of doing things and trying to enjoy myself and pretending to have fun, when what I really want to do is shout at everyone, “Don’t you know my Dad died?!” Pretending to be fine so I don’t upset other people is exhausting. 

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Someone was unkind to me, and it made me miss you even more, but now I think about it and I know if I’d told you about it, you would have laughed at what they said and made me see the ridiculousness of it. I’m going to try to do that more. 

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There was a sketch on SNL that would have made you laugh. I remember being at the market with you and you wondered whether market traders spoke that way at home. This sketch was about auctioneers at home and it was just like that. I hate the feeling when I’m about to say, “Dad will like this,” and then remember I can’t send it to you. Like being punched in the stomach. 

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There are lots of photos of me taken by you. But so few of the two of us together. You were the photographer when I was young. With your proper camera. When I left home we didn’t have cameras in our phones. Selfies weren’t a big thing. I’d only been using the internet for a couple of years. It wasn’t until just before Chris and I got married that I got a smartphone, and we didn’t live close enough to be taking photos together. Pictures of us at the wedding, of course. And then babies started arriving and I have so many pictures of you cuddling them, playing with them, wearing silly hats with them. But still, barely any of you with me. Maybe if I had been born a few years later I would have taken those selfies. It seems silly. People have loved their Dads for centuries without having pictures of themselves together, but sometimes I feel like people will wonder why there are so few of us together. 

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Today was a crying day. I just couldn’t stop. You shouldn’t have died.

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Five months without you. It feels like yesterday and forever at the same time. It’s getting harder the longer we’ve been without you. Can we go back now? Have you back now? The future is stretching out ahead and it looks bleak.

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