Daddy’s Girl

She had awoken feeling very melancholy … the vestiges of a dream fading quickly but memories of her father lingering.  He had been gone now for 14 years but she missed him still, the pain of his passing still fresh and raw and no more so than now.

She remembered many things of her father – fishing with him off the beach, sitting atop his golf bag as a young girl pretending it was her pony, the help he gave her later when a real pony was finally hers, teaching her football and sharing his own childhood memories.

He had imagined himself a rather dab handyman and was affectionately nicknamed Mr Fixit.  Truth be known he often made matters worse, “fixing” a tv once with no sound that ended up having no picture either. He was always fiddling trying to mend things.

She remembered her father as a man that was not overly affectionate, and nor did he speak much of his emotions and feelings. His childhood had been vastly different from her own – a large family separated by war and where children were sent to boarding schools at the tender age of five.  It was no wonder that he struggled as an adult to share his thoughts but she knew he loved her. He’d giggle when she said “I love you Daddy” and would look embarrassed, never repeating the phrase back, but she knew he loved it.

She had kept all his old emails that he had started to send before he died.  It had been easier for him to write her his thoughts rather than voice them, and for this she was grateful as she could reread those messages now and for a brief moment be taken back in time to when he was alive.

He was stubborn and obstinate at times but it was precisely this trait in him that enabled him to outlive his disease by many years longer than doctors had initially thought.  He’d remained positive and knowledgeable about his illness and would often tell his doctors what medication he needed.  She was sure that deep down, he had harboured a glimmer of hope that he would beat this cancer, along with the rest of the family who were never ready to say goodbye.

But there was one everlasting memory and that was his laugh.  He had an infectious and booming laugh that had always encouraged those around him to join in.  He could tell the worst jokes in the world but still, everyone would laugh, simply because he did.  She could hear his laugh now, looking at a photo of him at a party – dressed as Compo from Last of the Summer Wine, at some fancy dress party they’d been to, with a mischievous smile plastered on his face.

She still found it hard to accept that she no longer had him in her life.  That she could no longer pick up the phone and call him, or email him.  He’d died before the rise of social media and she thought how sad that was as he would have loved the ability to reach out to his estranged family around the world – a widespread family that without him may never have been reunited.

She thought of him often and today no less.  She only wished for one more day, to love  and to share. He’d been gone all these years but she knew he was forever by her side and in her heart.

“Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight?  I am waiting for you, for an interval somewhere very near.  Just around the corner.  All is well” Henry Scott-Holland (1847-1918)