Happy Heavenly Birthday Dad.

You would have been 88 today.

It’s been 5 years, 9 months and 13 days since you left, and somehow I still feel like I need a conversation with you more than ever.

The last five years have been the craziest, hardest, strangest and most transformative years of my life. Losing you sent me into a spiral I didn’t understand at the time. With lockdowns, isolation, grief, anger, regret and everything that came after, I lost myself for a while.

I still carry regret around not spending more time with you when I was younger. I moved closer to you because I wanted to be there for you, like you had been there for me for most of my life. Four weeks later, you were gone.

That still hurts.

I still think about your funeral. I still think about how restricted everything was. How few people were allowed to be there. How we couldn’t give you the send off you deserved. How we couldn’t even carry your coffin in the way I would have wanted. Those things stay with me, because you deserved better.

But I hope you know I loved you then.

I love you now.

I’ll love you for the rest of my life.

For me, you’re not only in one resting place, even though the Silver Birch Glade is beautiful. You’re everywhere. You’re in the way I think, the way I feel, the way I keep trying, the way I want to leave the world better than I found it.

Since you’ve been gone, I’ve been through more than I ever thought I could carry.

I’ve lost myself.

I’ve found pieces of myself again.

I’ve moved homes.

I’ve lost jobs and found new ones.

I’ve been heartbroken.

I’ve been angry.

I’ve been scared.

I’ve been confused.

I’ve had to face parts of myself I spent years avoiding.

I’ve quit cannabis after abusing it for far too long.

I don’t smoke now.

I barely drink.

I’ve got my emotional control back.

I’ve learned how to pause before I react.

I’ve learned how to choose my response rather than be dragged around by every feeling.

I’ve worked through things I didn’t know a person could work through.

I’m still not finished. I’m still healing. I’m still learning. I’m still walking through it all. But I’m more myself now than I’ve been in years.

I’ve passed my driving test.

I’ve run a 10k.

I’ve gone abroad on my own.

I’ve met new people.

I’ve had some of the deepest conversations of my life.

I’ve started to understand what I want from love, from life, from myself, and from the future.

I’m calmer now.

Stronger.

More centred.

More aware.

Freer in myself, even while life still tests me.

I wish I could sit with you and tell you all of this properly. I wish I could hear what you’d say. I wish I could ask you questions I didn’t know I’d one day need answers to.

But I carry you with me.

I carry your memory.

I carry your love.

I carry the lessons.

I carry the pain too, because that’s part of loving someone deeply.

I hope, wherever you are, you can see that I’m still trying. Still growing. Still choosing life. Still trying to become the man I know I’m meant to be.

Nothing has felt quite the same since you left.

But I’m still here, Dad.

I’m still moving forward.

I miss you more than I can put into words.

Happy birthday.

Love you always xx