Dear Dad ❤️

A little letter to you, wishing you were here.

Dear Dad,

Hey you.

Just a little check-in letter to you - from me.

It feels strange writing this. I don’t know why it has taken me so many years to sit down and actually talk to you like this. Maybe because for such a long time, I couldn’t.

It’s been more than twenty years now. Twenty-three, maybe twenty-four. Sometimes I can’t believe that much time has passed. Sometimes it feels like yesterday, and sometimes it feels like you’ve been gone for an entire lifetime.

Life has been a bit of a journey these last few years, Dad.

I’ve been thinking a lot about who I am, what I want, and whether the life I’m living is actually the life that feels right for me. Everything can become so repetitive. Work, responsibilities, routines, the same places, the same days. There’s so much noise that sometimes I can’t hear myself underneath it.

So I’m going to Europe.

I’m going by myself, Dad.

And I think, in some ways, I’m going there to search for something within me that I can’t seem to find amongst all the noise and repetition, the grief and the way life moves so fast. I want to see things I’ve never seen. I want to walk through places I’ve only ever seen in photographs. I want to be uncomfortable and excited and lost and completely free for a little while. I want to pause and remember what's important to me. I want to remember that I'm alive and what beauty there is in that.

I want to see who I am when nobody expects anything from me.

I think you’d probably be proud of me.

And there are things happening over here that I wish you could see.

Jazz is having a baby.

Dad, I know you would be so happy.

You would be such a good grandpa.

I can picture it so clearly. I can picture you being completely obsessed with that little baby. I can picture you buying her everything she needed, probably everything she didn’t need too. I can imagine you making her laugh, spoiling her, wanting to hold her, wanting to be involved in everything.

That was the type of person you were.

You were kind. You were loving. You showed people that you loved them. You had so much love to give.

And hearing Jazz’s pregnancy news has made me realise all over again just how much I wish you were here.

I wish you were here to hear her tell you.

I wish I could see your face when you found out.

I wish I could hear your voice.

I wish I could watch you become a grandfather.

I wish you could have known the person Jazz became.

Because she had to grow up without you.

And I was lucky enough to have you for eight years.

Eight years.

Sometimes I feel incredibly grateful for those eight years, and sometimes I feel heartbroken that they were all I got.

I remember your love.

And I think that’s part of why losing you the way we did has been so painful.

For such a long time, I didn’t really let myself think about it.

I ignored it.

I pushed it somewhere deep inside me and carried on. I think I had to. I was just a kid. There are things a child cannot possibly understand, and losing you was one of them.

So I grew up around the absence.

I learned how to live without asking too many questions.

And then, eventually, the questions came.

And so did the anger.

I became angry that you left.

Angry that you made a decision that changed the lives of everyone who loved you.

Angry that we never got to know what your life could have become.

Angry that there were birthdays and Christmases and weddings and milestones and ordinary Tuesdays that you weren’t here for.

And underneath the anger was so much sadness.

And now, after all these years, I think what I’m left with is this quiet, empty sadness where your love used to be.

Not because I don’t remember the love.

Because I do.

I remember that you were safe.

I remember that you loved us.

And perhaps that’s what makes it hurt so much.

You weren’t just someone we lost.

You were someone who made us feel loved.

And there is a particular kind of grief that comes from losing someone who made you feel safe.

I wish you had stayed.

I wish you had waited.

I wish whatever pain you were experiencing that day could have been just a little bit quieter than the love that surrounded you.

I wish you could have known that your story wasn’t finished.

I wish you could have met the people we became.

I wish you could have seen how much life there was still left to live.

Because Dad, if I could tell you one thing now, more than twenty years later, it would be this:

Your pain was temporary.
Your absence wasn’t.

The pain you were experiencing might have told you that there was no way forward.

It might have told you that you were a burden.

It might have told you that things would never change.

It might have told you that people would eventually be better without you.

But that wasn’t true.

And I wish you could have known that.

Because twenty-three, twenty-four years later, we are still here wishing you were here too.

Your family and your friends didn’t simply move on and forget.

We carried you.

We still carry you.

Every milestone has a little piece of your absence inside it.

Every time something wonderful happens, there is sometimes that tiny thought:

I wish Dad could see this.

When someone gets married.

When someone has a baby.

When someone achieves something they’re proud of.

When life changes.

When life becomes beautiful.

There is always the knowledge that you should have been here to witness some of it.

And that’s what I wish anyone who is thinking about suicide could understand.

You may believe that nobody will care when you’re gone.

They will.

You may believe that people will eventually forget you.

They won’t.

You may believe that your absence will make things easier.

It won’t.

There will be people who spend years wondering what they could have said differently.

There will be people who wish they had called.

People who will wish they had hugged you for a little longer.

People who will replay the last conversation they had with you.

People who will reach for their phone before remembering they can’t call you anymore.

And there will be people who will spend the rest of their lives wishing you had stayed long enough to see what came next.

Because there is always a what came next.

You just couldn’t see yours.

Dad, I don’t want your death to be the only story I tell about you.

You were more than the way you died.

You were my dad.

You were the man who loved me for eight years of my life.

You were the person whose love I was lucky enough to experience before I was old enough to understand how precious it was.

And even though I have spent years carrying anger, confusion, sadness and questions that will probably never have answers, I don’t want those things to be bigger than the love.

Because underneath everything else, I love you.

I miss you.

And I wish you were here.

I wish you could see me now.

I wish you could know that I’m going to Europe.

I wish I could tell you all the little things that have happened.

I wish you could meet the woman I’ve become.

I wonder what you would think of me.

I wonder whether you’d recognise the little eight-year-old girl you left behind.

I think you would.

And I think you’d be proud.

So I’m going to keep going, Dad.

I’m going to see the world.

I’m going to find pieces of myself.

I’m going to experience things.

I’m going to laugh.

I’m going to love people.

I’m going to make mistakes.

I’m going to keep growing.

And I’m going to keep living this life, even when it’s hard.

Because I think that’s one of the ways I can carry you with me.

Not by pretending you never left.

Not by pretending it didn’t hurt.

But by continuing to live.

By letting myself experience the beautiful things you never got to experience.

By seeing the places you never got to see.

By loving the people you never got to meet.

And by remembering that my life is still worth living, even when I can’t see that clearly.

I hope wherever you are, you’re at peace now.

I hope you know how deeply you were loved.

I hope you somehow know that you mattered.

That you still matter.

That you were never just a memory.

You were my dad.

You always will be.

And Dad, I forgive you for the things I couldn’t understand when I was younger.

I forgive you for leaving, even though a part of me will probably always wish you had stayed.

I forgive you because I don’t want to spend the rest of my life carrying anger towards someone I loved so much.

I want to remember your kindness.

Your warmth.

Your love.

The way you made people feel.

The eight years I got to have you.

And I want to hold those memories close.

There will always be an empty space where you should have been.

But that empty space exists because there was once so much love there.

And maybe that’s what grief really is.

Love with nowhere to go.

So I’ll keep giving that love somewhere to go.

I’ll carry it with me.

I’ll take it to Europe.

I’ll take it into the rest of my life.

I’ll take it with me when I watch Jazz become a mum.

I’ll take it with me when I see the people I love reach milestones you never got to witness.

And I’ll think of you.

I’ll wonder what you would say.

I’ll wish you were here.

And then I’ll keep going.

Because I am still here.

And Dad, after everything, I think that’s what I want you to know most.

I love you.

I always have.

I always will.

I miss you more than I know how to explain.

And I wish with every part of me that you had stayed.

But I am going to live.

I’m going to live the life you never got the chance to finish.

I’m going to find the beauty in it.

I’m going to find myself in it.

And wherever you are, I hope somehow you can see me.

I hope you’re proud.

I hope you know that your little girls grew up.

And I hope you know that, after all these years, they still love their dad.

Forever.

Love always,
Your daughter