A letter to Dad

Dear Dad,

It was hot when I got home from going out to get some shopping this afternoon Dad and when I changed into my old shorts, that are now getting a bit too big for me, (or is it that I am getting smaller?) I thought of you… I thought of how comfortable you felt getting changed after work and into your old gardening clothes…

It has made me sad for so many years how little you spoke to and acknowledged me when you came home, I felt so uneasy around you, but knowing what I know now I wish you were here to give a hug, or that as a child I came out to be with you, in your element instead of just sitting around inside feeling lonely and watching TV.

There is a soft gentle breeze flowing through the doors today and Jasper is by my side as I write to you.. I think of how our beagle Sasha got injured and how it was you who gave her her medicine before you decided it was not fair on her and she needed to go to be with friends who had acreage and a lot of land for her to run around. Either that, or like on the Friends episode where Ross finds out their family dog was put down (after being lied to about it going to a ‘farm’) you had her euthenaised and wanted to spare me the pain.

I feel you so close to me this afternoon, Dad. If accounts of the spirit world are correct then you are with Mum in a beautiful place, I hope that Aunty Jo and Uncle Piet are there too and Judy… I want you to know I understand more now of the things you did. I was just reading an interview with James Hilllman that I want to share on my blog in which he said modern psychology fails in placing the illness or mistake in the ‘patient’ when really its down to larger forces and powers.

I think you would have loved James Hillman’s take on things and think of the psychology study course you kept in your cupboard in the study that Mum and I only discovered after you died. Maybe parts of you live on in me, I just still don’t fullt understand why you seemed to feel a University education was not helpful to me but maybe you were right, figuring the best way to learn, was as you had to do, in the ‘school of hard knocks’. I still wish I had your support to finish my teaching degree Dad.. I really, really needed it.

At this time of year, as it draws closer to the time of your diagnosis in 1984 you are on my mind.. The coming of the warmer weather reminds me of the day you and Mum asked me over to deliver the ‘big news’. Maybe you and I both cried a lot then cause somewhere deep inside we knew we only had another few months.. I still cry coming home in the afternoons. I know enough by now to know my sadness isn’t pathology and that love goes on (as does some of the deeper hurt). These days I try to focus on the love..

I also know that closure is just a concept.. For your soul and mine, well its clear we both had interconnect karma.. So when I put on these old shorts and look at my skinny Dutch legs, just like you I find my way back to the ground of you that gave me birth… Thanks for that gift Dad, despite the rough hope to be seeing you soon.

Your (sometimes) loving daughter

xoxo