30 years

Thirty years; I literally have no idea how so much time has passed by because it still feels like yesterday (or today). 

My Dad, my hero, died at 15:51 on this very day 30 years ago, and my brain still can't compute that he is gone and that it was so very long ago. People would tell me "it gets easier with time". Those people LIED. Anyone who tells you such a thing is a liar; their heart is in the right place, they're trying to help, but they lie. It doesn't get any easier. The grief today is as raw as it was 30 years ago, however, at some point you switch from crying, feeling sad and being overwhelmed by feelings you have no control over, to smiling, laughing and remembering the good, bad (and at times) the very ugly. Just 18 days ago my Number 1 was ignored by her own Dad on the 11th anniversary of her Mum's death; when her husband pointed this out to him, telling him that she was struggling, his reply was "it's been 11 years" as though she should treat the day as any other. Grief has no timescale; yes, to some her still feeling sad and missing her Mum after 11 years may seem odd (these people obviously have no heart and are emotionless - true in her Dad's sense) but to me, telling someone who lost her Mum at such a young age that she should be over it by now, shows he is a heartless wanker. It doesn't matter if it's 11 hours, 11 days, 11 years, or 11 decades; she was allowed to feel that day (and any other day) she was/is allowed to remember, and to want her Dad to at least acknowledge she's still struggling. Thankfully I've never needed people to acknowledge today; I deal with my pain differently to her, but I do like to talk about my Dad. I like to remember him. It's those memories that keep his spirit still alive. If someone was to say to me "it's been 30 years, you should be over it by now" I'd probably want to smack them in the face. 

I'm glad I still miss my Dad; I'm glad I remember him - not just today, I remember him every day - because in my (and my brother, Mum and anyone else who loved him) world it shows he was an important person, someone we all loved. If we didn't miss him then what was the point of him being put on this earth in the first place? He made a difference to our lives. 

I like to think that somewhere, in a parallel universe, the other me is going about her day-to-day business thinking about how she will see her parents on Saturday (it's my birthday then and I am pretty sure I would have spent the day with them (or at least seen them) regardless of how old they are). I'm pretty sure in her world he's a grumpy old bugger, driving my Mum crazy; her driving him equally as crazy. I'm a little jealous of that 'me'. The me who still gets to moan about him when he pisses me off. He may have been my hero but he was also a human being. I may have loved a whole wide full, but he was still the man who would tell me off, make me want to not speak to him for a day. I hope that other me realises how short life can be and spends as much time as her life allows her to with her folks. 

I wonder how my life would have ended up, what I would be doing, where I would be, how things would have panned out, if he hadn't died. Would my exes have dared to screw me over in the way they did. Would he have had me married off to the son of someone he knew (he would often try to fix me up with random guys). Would I have been taking both him and my Mum to football each Saturday? So many 'what if's' something I assume millions of people around the world have when it comes to dealing with the death of a loved one. 

I don't share photos of him on my facebook to get people talking to me. I'm not writing this because I'm looking for sympathy or attention - I'm sure to some of you that's what you are thinking; I do it because he deserves to be remembered. I don't believe in an after life. I don't believe he's out there in the ether somewhere looking down on me. He's dead, he's gone, he's not coming back. We won't be reunited in some beautiful paradise when my time comes (not for at least another 43 years). I can accept that, I can live with that. What I can't live with is the thought he might be forgotten. 

Thankfully we live in a world now where we will remain, in a server or file somewhere, for eternity. My brother has an ancestry page with a family tree; suddenly people from the past that we knew nothing about, have been brought back to life (in a non-flesh way). They are there for other people to view, others to now learn about. They are dead, but they are now not forgotten. I am immortalised forever on that site (and many of my own ones too) and I love that, because I have no kids to remember me when I am gone; I have no descendants who will know about their great-great grandmother by stories handed down, but I will still be out there somewhere, where someone may come across me in a hundred years and I absolutely love that. I may never be remembered in the way my Dad is right now, I may never be missed in the same way he is, and I am fine with that but I love that one day someone may come across my name, do a little research and discover who I was, who I am; in doing so they will then find out about my Dad and once again he will become alive; only in that person's mind/imagination, and maybe only for the 10 minutes they are reading through, but for those 10 minutes my Dad will come back to life, and I'll take that any day. 

I wish I'd put those 30 years between that day, and this one, to better use. Done things to make him proud of me, lived the life I really wanted to live, the one he would have wanted me to live, but as I've always said "miracles I can perform, the impossible takes me a little longer". I know I've done things that will have disappointed him. I also know that he would have forgiven me doing them and still tried to move heaven-and-earth to help me achieve all the things I wanted to and I take comfort from that when I'm wishing I could do more. 

I'm smiling as I think about him, I hope everyone else does too. 

I wish we'd had digital cameras when he was still alive; the photo's below might do him a little more justice.