Dear dad...

Dear dad,

Let me start by saying, Happy Birthday. I desperately wish I could tack on the words “and many more” in an off-key birthday song, but here we are. And there you are, staying forever 68, same face, same wrinkles and smile. The same as how we captured you in our last photos, 3 birthdays ago.

I hope wherever you are, if there is a “wherever” (forgive me, I am no believer), that it is full of your favourite things on your special day. That you’re on a beach, basking in the sun like a crocodile, not worrying about skin cancer, or Covid, or the taxman. Just doing you. Saying whatever the fuck you want to say, doing whatever the fuck you want to do - just being rad. Because you can, you are gone. Not like you didn’t do all of this when you were alive, you were always brave that way. Living like an excitable dog who’s had the gate left open, just bolt, hard, into the field of flowers. Filling your life with all the things you loved to do.

How have I been you ask? Well, hang onto those tatty pyjama broeks you always wore, even to the shops because “they’re not pyjamas, they’re palazzo pants NATASHA!” …you know you’re in trouble when your parents go full name… (fucking absolutely were pyjamas). Things have NOT gone as you planned.

I have been, okay. Tattered and bruised but still fucking awesome :D ... 3 Birthdays without you, 2.5 years gone, and I still feel like it punches me in the face every time. They just feel different. The first punch was just shock really, the second just hurts, the 3rd, well, now I’m just spitting out a little less blood. It still hurts but I’m definitely at the stage of putting my hands up to protect my face and asking, when does the punching stop because Im not having a good time of it. I’m told… they’ll stop “eventually”, that one day, I’ll face them and yell “You hit like a bitch!” then just walk away. But what do I know about taking a beating, I spend every waking moment trying to NOT get punched in the face, so I’ll believe the grief experts. Truth be told, I am starting to be able to talk about you and smile, and tell stories where they don’t always make me want to cry. Progress yes?

But, let me tell you, your death really punched my ticket.

You regularly lose a few clicks of your ticket during your life and each one eats away at it. The loss of someone you loved, a betrayal, an accident, they all get a click. Your death? Took more clicks than I could spare really. A lot of real estate, just gone. And I am so angry at you for that.

I digress though, what have you missed.

Well, your estate was an absolute mess, not your doing, you were clear, but you’d be absolutely fucking horrified, and I’m sorry for that. I know you’d be looking at us all and screaming “Have you all lost your fucking minds!” But we tried dad, your children really tried to make you proud and were dragged through the mud by a lot of people for it. But we fought for what you said was the very last thing you wanted from us. We fought so hard that we lost ourselves in so many ways. Anxiety, depression, stress so severe that some times it made my heart hurt, and not in an emotional way. In a… we may need an ambulance way. The horror and the black RAGE has been devastating to say the least. But we are at a point now, where an ending is in sight. God I hope. But what’s left in the ruins dad, is that your family is no longer a unit, or at least it’s not as you left it. We are all scattered and damaged and I fear, this will never recover. I am sorry. It’s not the movies, some mountains, ARE just too big.

Mom has dementia. click click click Fuckit you parents man, can you give a girl’s heart a break. Another mountain Im turning away from right now. I don’t want to set foot on it.

And Me? We live in “Murica” now. Georgia to be exact, where I get to say things like “all ya’ll” and “I aint mad at it!” - “Guuuuuuurl put it in the claw-set”, “You look rode hard and put away wet!” (This doesn’t mean anything close to the pervy-ness I thought it meant). I’m trying to land somewhere in the middle… part redneck, part southern belle - is it working? And Yes, Im starting to love me a little country music (skiesie ne pa). I aint mad at it… One cannot rock out all the time, a little banjo goes a long way to heal my achy breaky heart.

Ava still talks about you all the time - her “Bapie” - you’d be proud of her. She’s so funny, is wicked smahhhht, caring and empathetic and fierce as hell (Just ask Dale’s balls when they play-fight), she has all my good parts and none of my bad. She’s just the best.

The brandy is NOT as cool though, you’d be a sad panda, but Im working on it, and I will work through the brandies here until I find one you and I would have enjoyed together (the kind where your neighbours find you in your bra and broeks at 3am challenging the mailbox to a fight while slapping at it like a cat, and winning with a fly-kick that would make all the broken toes worth it.) - for science. (Sidenote: Remember to groom bikini line - I still have a modicum of dignity and there is ZERO need to be the crazy neighbour who came out drunk in her undies and 80’s porn bush and kicked a postbox, immediately dropped and then whimpered something about “jou ma se vissie” while rubbing her ankle violently). See… this is the redneck coming out…

It’s awesome and I love it, and sometimes, it’s sad and sucks a little, I miss my people, my hartsmense, but, I have met more! Mostly, I’m remembering a life where I don’t wish my days away anymore. I am breathing deeper and saying “This is the life” much more. Where my biggest worry right now is the fucking squirrel who keeps hanging on my bird feeder swinging like Miley Cyrus “came in like a wrecking balllllllllll!” - little cute-as-a-button ratbag!! Clearly, I am taking all the pleasure in the little things and I know, that is what you would have wanted for me. A life full of firsts again. Full of good people and moments, be they right next to me, or across an ocean.

I am happy. Majority of the time.

Your kids are Okay dad. We will be Okay. You can get your last loop dop now… we gon be alright.

We miss you, so much.

Thank you for being my dad.

There were so many times I wished you weren’t when I was little. ( If this was being taped in front of a live studio audience, this is the time everyone would gasp, and someone would start chanting “Jerry Jerry!” - speaking of, he died, have you bumped into him?) But I can say that now. Because as much of a great party animal and caring person you were, you were also so often a real shit. And my brain has done the thing I’m sad to admit to anyone who wasn’t there, the trauma block, to protect me from my childhood, taking away the good and bad memories, it didn’t differentiate, and left me with only a handful that you have to scrape out of a barrel.

But I don’t wish that anymore. Now I am just thankful you were there, and you were you, because without you, I wouldn’t be me. And Im grown enough to understand, you were also learning how to adult and parent, making mistakes and being human.

So thank you for the times I DO remember, I know there are so many more, and maybe some day my brain will chill the fuck out enough to lend me some of the deleted scenes. (Lend me? Borrow me….? fuck knows)

Thank you for teaching me to ride a skate board in your best suit.

Thank you for bringing me sweets, a peach Fanta, and 2 videos to watch every single day for 10 days when I had chicken pox.

Thank you for coming down to my “shop” in the garden with your wallet when I was very little, and doing some serious window shopping, asking for prices and negotiating with me to buy back all the ornaments you already owned that Id pilfered from the house to make some sweetie money!

For teaching me to swim.

Thank you for always handing me your old school hankie for me to blow my nose on when I was crying, and then quietly taking it and putting it back in your pocket. I have your hankies in my drawer now. They comfort me.

For walking me down the aisle - even though while everyone was watching us, they thought you were whispering words of encouragement to me, you were instead legitimately asking me if you could get an invoice for my wedding dress listed as “bricks” instead of “dress” so you could claim it back from the taxman, and then, to be fair, asked me if I really wanted to do this because if I didn’t you could have me in the car in 5 minutes! Not doing a daddy / daughter dance to this day breaks my heart in the worst way. Why didn’t I just do it? Why??!!

Thank you for ALWAYS having my back, being my absolute safety net and soft place to land whenever I needed you, no matter what the task or time. The bumps have been so hard without you.

Thank you for the steel in my spine. I’ll take it from here…

I will always be grateful you were mine now. I should have said that when you were here.

Happy birthday dad, I love you.

Always.