We should have been on a plane now

The last thing I remember seeing when I cleaned your living room was your white board that kept a list of all your important dates.  The bottom one read: April 17th USA two weeks.

Then you got ill and while you were in hospital we made the decision to postpone the trip. I'm not sure if you could hear me when  you were on the ventilator but I told you we'd do it when you got better.  All you friends in the USA were so upset at the news you were ill and were praying.  I felt so guilty for postponing the trip because everyone else couldn't go, but I couldn't go with you.

My thinking was that if you did recover and at this point there was less reason to assume you wouldn't, you would be in hospital for a long time and then needing a lot of rehabilitation. I couldn't even think about taking a trip in the middle of that.

And now I have to make that trip at some point without you. The rest of the gang will be there but with a vital member missing. How do I deal with that Dad? You'd tell me to "just get on with it".  I have amazing memories of our last trip together, even though you created riots wherever you went!  So I thought I'd share some with the readers as well:

You and Arran pretending to be great at croquet

We had lunch with the bears

eight hours on a plane could make anyone look like this

the USA make it bigger, make it badder!

You found a thrown

sneak a few of the grapes you picked

It really was this big (pity it was plastic)

Friday funkiness with Dad

This was the song you sung to me time and time again, you loved singing it in your fake country accent lol! Good times. I can look back on this and smile, thats something !!

People keep telling me...

Hey Dad,

People keep telling me that you were an inspiration, that you were a breath of fresh air, someone who told it like it was, please or offend. I keep hearing people say that you lived every day for God and that you did everything asked of you and so you had run your race, earlier than most, but none the less you had completed the work set for you.

Everyone misses you, many wish you could come back. There's no one to take your place and I guess never will. That's what happens when you live your life in such a way that it affects everyone around you! And I think that it's not until a person has gone that this is really known. Depending on how you live your life, depends on the size of the hole you leave. Well you my dear dad, have left a massive hole. Me and the boys have a giant hole following us around and many others feel the loss of you not being here.

So I thought that this would be a great tribute to you:

I'm trying to fix the things that can't be fixed

Hey Dad,

You know I am not the tidiest person in the world. My house looks lived in! You can tell that four people live here.  Since you've gone untidiness is really getting to me!  I have all of your belongings from the flat under my stairs and your treasured possessions in a box under the table.  There are letters from all different types of organisations that need to be filed in your paperwork.  The thing is the house is no different to how it usually is, but I've changed.

When I get to work the office is full of season stuff and work that needs to be sent out in the next few days and everything is everywhere and it is really getting to me!

I have been reading the book that I posted about and the writer has now covered the issue of fixing things! Having to be in control because you have lost control of something else.  Loosing a loved one really does shake the foundation from under your feet!  So now I am  needing order and structure because I have lost my footing and feel shaken up.  I am trying to make things better that don't need me to because I need to do something!

Words are not needed

Grief shared is grief abated

That's a big word hey Dad? I had to look it up to understand it, but thankfully when you tap the word on the kindle (it's an electronic book reading device) it gives the definition.

People think that because I am not talking out loud about my feelings that I am in someway not grieving.  Thing is Dad, I am opening up to those I feel safe to be vulnerable with, does that make sense?  I am fragile right now (I may not look it to most). One wrong word and I think I may possibly shatter into a thousand pieces.

My new work colleagues have been amazing! Maybe they are not close enough to me to know me yet and so opening up to them is easier?  I talk to the MR all the time but don't want to keep dragging over the same things with him, cos he's grieving too!  I talk to the boys about you all the time, you are in almost every conversation.

Shar T has come up with a new strategy for carrying out church stuff it's called "pod's way" which simply means see a need, help that need out and keep doing what your asked to do without moaning, complaining or giving up your commitment. I know you'd shrug it off, but it's not just me who sees you this way.

JP's other half misses you terribly and wishes you could come back!  I wish that too but if you didn't come back that Sunday night, I knew you never would! And that's OK. I know the reasons why and I accept them. I just miss you sooooo much that I wish, really wish that for one minute (only one) that you could come back and just give me a hug and say it's all gonna be OK.

I'm sharing my grief with those who read this so here's hoping that it will become less intense, to reduce in amount and to become smaller. How that happens I do not know but this is where it starts.

xx

I need to make this valid

I know it's a strange one Dad, but it really hit home to me that just as in life we make things valid, we also need to give validity to someone dying. You know over and over again I tell people how you lived your life everyday for what you believed in and as a result you got called home early.

Remember all those years you told me you would die in your 80's?  When you first passed away, I felt cheated of about twenty years with you, but I then began to realise that you had indeed run your race and you had done it so quickly that you did in fact gain twenty years in eternity.

I talk about you every day, I suppose it's away of keeping you here as well as me declaring to the world how proud I am to have had a Dad like you. I can't help but feel fatherless right now; as a Daddy's girl that's just normal right? The book I am reading is really helping me to realise that it's OK to be doing what I am doing and that quite surprisingly I am a textbook case for dealing with grief. How odd is that? I have never known us to be textbook lol!

I will tell your story for as long as I need to, to whoever I need to and not worry about telling it again and again. I'm a work in progress and just like you did, I'm doing this "my way" ;0)

love you always xxx