What happened since you left

Dad,
You left on this day, 28 years ago.

I say you left, but actually, you died. The cancer you left untreated for almost ten years shot up in your spine and devoured your brain and killed you.

But that is irrelevant now, because the cold hard truth is that you’ve been gone for more than 10'000 days. And a lot has happened. So let me fill you in.

I made a relative success of the career you thought nothing of!

I know you wanted me to be a lawyer and dismissed any talk of a career in creativity, but actually, I managed to do quite well! I’ve lived on a few different continents, I made some work that has been quite successful. I mentored people, I started companies and more than anything, I became a more informed and enlightened person from travelling the world and being exposed to very smart and talented people. So, there’s that.

I had two kids!

I have a daughter, 16, and you’d really like her. She has your sense of humour and she works really hard. More importantly, she has received quite a few slaps from life that she didn’t deserve, but when the going got tough, she got even tougher. She is not letting any setback get to her and she is going to be fine. She is your grand-daughter. I wish you could talk to her for 30 minutes. She would cry and cry to feel your heart and not feel so alone in the world.

I have a boy, and he has just turned 2. Not sure what to make of him yet, but he has your sense of humour and he waves at everyone like your mother. You’d be mock-cross at him all the time but always winking at him, like you’re sharing a secret. I wish you could spend ten minutes together. So I wouldn’t feel so alone in t his world.

The world is different!

I wish I could drive you somewhere in my car. I have a phone that I plug into my car. It let’s me play almost any song from anywhere in the car while we drive. And on the screen in front of me, I have a live map, that tells me the shortest way to go where we need to go, to avoid the traffic. We could call anyone we want, anytime, because there are no more trunk calls. The only qualification is that they would need to have a phone. And be alive.

You can’t call dead people.

You’d really like it.

Miss you, Dad. Today, more than ever. Even if it has been 28 bloody years.