Mummascribbles – Dear Dad – Mummascribbles

Dear Dad,

I was laying on the bed last night, feeding Oscar to sleep, and I had a banging headache. It was one of those really tired headaches that throb because I’ve had a disturbed sleep, followed by a day with a teething baby who had at regular occurances screamed down my ear in frustration.

It was a headache that I have had all too frequently recently and suddenly my mind was on you. It’s a natural link because you died of a brain tumour. A mass that caused your body to give up piece by piece as it was spreading ferociously on your brain and leaning on the key areas that made your body work. First it was the part that controlled your left side, then your right and then your speech – until you were laid in a bed in a hospice taking your final breaths. 

I remember it like it was yesterday and yet it was very nearly five years ago. The last post that I wrote about you was on the four year anniversary of your death and I said that it was the first year that your loss was getting easier to deal with.

And that is mostly true.

But every now and then…BAM – it whacks me right in the face. Your absence takes my breath away and it hurts. It really, really hurts. 

Last night was one of those times.

When I started thinking about you, the tears started filling my eyes. I was trying to remember you, really focus on you – your laugh, your smile, your voice, your mannerisms. I wanted to see you, to hug you, to just be with you. I had to take a couple of those big gulps and hold it all back so that I didn’t disturb the trying to sleep baby.

And then today?

Today Zach was hiding behind the curtains and I had to guess who he was. I went through all of the grandparents and that included you – Grandad in the woods. When I mentioned you (and put the thought into his head), he then was you and do you know what he said to me? 

I am going to be Grandad in the woods. I am going to pretend that he’s alive again. Grandad in the woods is alive again. 

It was like a punch to the throat and I had to hold back my emotions because I didn’t want him to think that he had upset me. But by god, I so wish it were true. I wish it was that easy, that you could just be alive again. That you were here with us watching your grandsons grow up. That you were watching me attempt to juggle two children. That you were as totally impressed as I was today when Seat (the car dealership) collected my car for a service and then dropped it back to me when they were done!

I wish that bloody tumour had been non-existent. Or that if it absoutely had to be there, it was treatable – that you had at least some chance of surviving it. It was so cruel, so harsh, so unfair.

I wish that when I walk up Caroline’s staircase, the pictures on the walls were of my alive Dad rather than my dead one. I wish, I so so wish that my two gorgeous boys got to play trains with you, or help you in the garden. 

I know that life is unfair. I know that this happens and has happened to so many other people. But this is me, this is my life story and it absolutely sucks that you are no longer a part of it. 

I miss you Dad. I miss you so bloody much.

xxxx