It’s Father’s Day today.

My first one without my Dad.

Well, I say that.  Technically it’s not.  I’m not really sure if I’ve actually ever spent Father’s Day with my Dad or not.  Ever since I was little the arrangement was that I went to stay with him every other weekend, and that continued until I was 14 or 15 years old.  I suppose the probability that one of my weekends with him happened to land on Father’s Day must be relatively high in all that time, so somewhere along the line I must have done. I don’t remember it though.

I guess what I meant to say was: it’s my first Father’s Day now that he’s gone.

I’ve been dreading today for months.  Avoiding the shops as the aisles stacked up with ever increasing numbers of in-your-face displays of Father’s Day cards and gifts.  I managed to tolerate them for long enough to be able to take the girls to pick out a card for my husband, and for me to choose a card for my stepdad.  I shopped online for their gifts though, unable to face the messages inherent within the commercialisation.  “It’s too late,” I kept thinking.  “I didn’t say it enough while he was here and now he’s gone and I can’t.”  I considered buying a card for Dad too, but there is no grave and his ashes are yet to be scattered, so there isn’t even anywhere I can go to spend time with him and leave a message that I know he’ll never read.

Anyways, the day is here, my husband will soon be awake after his night shift at work and will open his card and gifts from our girls.  It seemed important to write some words down about the occasion, though I’m not entirely sure what it is that I’ll be writing yet.

Bear with me.

I don’t want this to be another post about how sad I feel that he is no longer here.  Or how the tidal wave of tears can quite literally overcome me without warning in the most random of places – sitting in the car, walking round the supermarket, doing the washing up – leaving me unable to breathe, with a pain in my chest so intense that it feels like my lungs are full of burning acid.

Nor do I want it to be a post about how our relationship was less-than-conventional and how we were only just beginning to get to know each other as equals, as adults, in the year leading up to his death.

I want this to be a happy post.

I do have many happy memories with Dad: going swimming on a Saturday morning followed by KFC for lunch and an afternoon playing Zelda or Super Mario Bros on the Nintendo; being taken to see musicals in London; and listening to the Top 40 in the car on the way home on a Sunday evening to name but a few.  I’m sure I’ll be spending some time today remembering him in the quieter moments in between the chaos.

Dad also taught me many valuable lessons, and I’ve been reflecting on these over the last few days…

Lesson #1: Live life with passion.  The things he loved, he really loved.  Music – everything from Madame Butterfly to Meatloaf – was played at full volume, sung along to at the top of his voice, hands gesticulating and conducting along with the fluidity of the notes being sung.

Lesson #2:  Appreciate the finer things in life.  Dad loved good wine, good cigars and good food and he never apologised for it.  He surrounded himself with beautiful, high quality things – good art, good books, good furniture.

Lesson #3:  It’s ok to change direction.  Dad worked in the pharmaceutical industry, in publishing at one of the major companies and in the hospitality sector at different times of his life.  Three vastly contrasting areas of work and he enjoyed them all for different reasons.

And perhaps the most valuable lesson of all is one that I learnt during one of our last ever telephone conversations, just a couple of weeks before he died.  It was one of our longest too – nearly two hours in total.  Towards the end of his life Dad wasn’t so successful (in the traditional sense of the word).  His health was starting to fail and his demons (alcohol & depression) were beginning to get the better of him.  He’d lost his job and was pretty low.  He was telling me how he was still looking for work but that he knew he was almost unemployable.  I asked him what he would love to do, if he could do anything.  He thought for a minute or two and then almost shyly offered to me  that he would have loved to have written a book.  He’d even started one a long time ago but had never gone back to it and finished it.  We discussed it for a few minutes and then said our goodbyes as I had to leave to pick up my girls from school.  Just as I was about to put the phone down I heard him say quietly “maybe I’ll hunt it out and start writing again”.  Lesson #4:  Never give up on your dreams.

Dad was a great storyteller, and while his stories often got bigger and more exaggerated over time, it was the way he told them that made them (and him) so captivating.  I have no doubt that if he had lived longer, he would have put some of his stories down on paper.  Seeing as he’s not here, I guess it’s up to me.

I’m spending today with my husband, the father of my children.  He’s wonderful with them and provides a fun, relaxed balance to my over-organising, slightly anxious self.  I hope that one day they are able to say what lessons they’ve learnt from him as they’ve grown up. (If you asked them at the moment they would probably say that he’s taught them how to play Minecraft!).

I’ll also be giving my Step-Dad, Ray, a call.  He’s been in my life since I was 9 years old and is just as much my Dad as Dad was.  From him I have learnt two main lessons: #1 – you can do anything if you work hard enough at it.  And #2 – family goes beyond blood.

My girls often ask me questions about why I have two Dads and while it’s still quite hard to talk about I do my best to be as honest and simple in my responses as possible.  I’m so thankful that I got to have them both with me on my wedding day.

I’d love to find out what lessons you’ve learnt from your Dads, whether they are still with you or not, so please do leave a comment below with your thoughts.  Feel free to share this post if you think that people you know will find it useful or interesting.

Thank you for reading.