My wonderful daddy died mid-September. It was a long time coming and I was able to say goodbye. Since his death and the funeral I have memories now more vivid than before. I can replay them in my mind like a film. I look at photographs and they are so real it's as if he could just turn his head, look at me and smile. Sometimes I look out of the window and I can almost see him there, standing with his hands in the pockets of the fleece he would be wearing at this time of year, pulling the face he always pulled when standing in his wonderful garden and observing it all. I have a clear vision of him sat in his chair, foot crossed over his knee, holding the newspapers crossword in his right hand and his pen in his left, cocking his head slightly with the special look he always had on his face when he was thinking the answer over. I almost feel as though he's in the next room, he leaves just before I walk in so I miss him by a few seconds. My mum came to stay the other week and as she sat down to dinner I looked at her and I could almost see him standing there behind her in his blue shirt with his hands resting on her shoulders. I have vivid dreams where we are together, we both know he's died, and I say "not many people get a second chance to say something" and he looks at me and we embrace and in the end I don't say anything at all, there are no words left to say, we just hold each other the way we did before he died. But then I wake up and think it such a cruel trick, I would sooner not have dreamed at all it is so bittersweet.
I just had to write this down, to say it somewhere. Thank you for listening.