Dear Dad,
I can’t believe your gone, it doesn’t seem real, there are so many things that make it seem like your still here. It’s so hard to try and accept that you’ve gone but deep down I know that even though your not here physically you’re here spiritually.
Dad I just want to say Thank you for all the great things you did for me during your life and even though we were always fighting I can’t explain how much I love you.
Dad I’ve got some great memories of us two, Can you remember all the times when Me and Mam used to argue and I would always run to you and say “Dad, she’s picking on me” and you would always say “Stop being nasty to the poor bairn” and the time when we used to walk Tara along Hebburn riverside and once Tara pulled you over the wall and you had to grab a hold of her pass her to me and then I had to help you up, that was so funny, even though you never thought so. I remember when we were getting the greenhouses put in the garden and you taught me how to weld the bars together and we did that. Then the time when we always went to the garden centres and bought millions of flowers and we took them home and made hanging baskets for people, that was quite good fun. Can you remember all my birthdays when you used to buy loads of fireworks and sparklers for us all and that time when you took Me and Tacita and some others in the trailer and we were sitting in it while you were driving round the playing fields, that was so fun.
Dad I know you won’t be here for my 18th birthday this year but I know that you will be watching over me and I know that you will always be with me.
Remember when we got Fimbo the Ferret who was so cute before she turned vicious and we went and bought the hutch first and Mam went mad, and then we went and bought Fimbo. The next couple of weeks we started to build a runway for her but then you were bad and we never got it finished, the strange thing is Fimbo died a week and a day before you. Thinking back it seems quite weird like she was trying to tell me something. I remember when she bit me and I thought it really hurt and you were going, “what you crying for it, doesn’t even hurt” Yeah right dad you didn’t think it did but then when she bit you, you then knew how I felt. Everybody always said that I was the double of you, but I never thought so until now, now that you’re gone I realise that I do actually look like you.
Dad you had been in and out of hospital loads of times and yeah I knew that you were bad but I didn’t think you were that bad, until you got into Ward 10 in Shields, that was when Tony was telling Me and Mam that there was a possibility that you could go because you were so bad, that day I actually could tell that you were that bad because when Fr Martin came to see you and give you a blessing I could tell that you couldn’t breathe that day, and it was horrible to think that I could loose you. When you came home I was happy to see you and we had the hospital bed for you in the Dinning room with all your oxygen, and when you saw the wheelchair I could tell that you weren’t happy anymore, I remember you saying “Why have I got that” and Auntie Debbie had to tell you that if you got the bed you got everything with it. Even though you didn’t approve of the wheelchair I thought it was quite cool to play on so if you actually did need it, I used to get Mam to push it while I was sitting on it and take it to you, I remember you laughing at me.
It was the week before Christmas 2007 and Uncle Jimmy and Val came to see you on the Tuesday and said that on Boxing Day they would come and take you out in the wheelchair and because you had portable oxygen they would take you out drinking. Then on Tuesday night you sat there with Mam and watched the DVDs of Canada of all our cousins and also watched Purely Belter and into the west. On the Wednesday you were really bad and you never managed to get out of bed but
Me and Mam knew that you loved New Year so we decided to hold your funeral on New Years Eve, strangely enough it didn’t seem to be a sad day it was quite a happy day because we knew that you would be at peace and not suffering anymore, there was loads of people there, all your old friends. When Jeff did the eulogy he was so right what he was saying.
