The day my life changed forever

The 8th of June. The day my life changed forever.

True love, deep loss and living in the moment.

11 years ago today was the day everything changed in an instant!

I was a young mum to a special needs child with 3 jobs. I was working as a lifeguard in one gym, a gym assistant in another and trying to start my own personal training business up. The man I was living with at the time was having an affair and said he couldn’t look after my son while I went to work that evening. As usual, my dad swooped in, any opportunity to spoil his grandson and came over! 

When he walked through the door I knew something was wrong. A proud Yorkshire man who believed everything would be reyt and it won’t always be dark at 6 o’clock sat down on my sofa and said “daddy’s not well”. 

I knew instantly it must have been bad as he wasn’t certainly not one for dramatics. He told me in the last few days he had been forgetting things. He had left his shopping at the supermarket, couldn’t remember where he had left items and just had trouble recalling other bits and pieces. 

I sat down next to him, hugged him and said it would all be ok and we would call the doctor the next day. We said we loved each other and I went to work.

I cried a few times on my shift and thought about how much I loved this man. The man who had raised me, the man who gave me everything, the man who taught me all I know today. My mother was an emotionally absent alcoholic and my dad was a 2 in 1. He was everything to me.

I finished my shift and rushed to get home. As I walked through the door to the floor my flat was on in an old converted church, a woman stood in the hallway on an old flip phone. My flat door was propped open with a shoe and when she saw me she went completely white. I knew the phone she was holding belong to my dad. I hadn’t seen anyone else with a flip phone in years. Nothing seemed to piece together in my head though. Nothing made sense in that moment.

The woman with my dads phone said that my son was in her flat. My dad’s ex partner had called his phone and the woman in the hallway flipped it closed as soon as she saw me. Things after that are a bit of a blur.

As I had raised my son mostly living alone, I had often worried what would happen if I just didn’t wake up one morning. I told him if mummy doesn’t wake up you must shake me really, really hard to make sure I’m not fast asleep and if I still don’t wake up, call 999. He was too young for his own mobile phone so I had shown him how to use the landline. 

This is what he had done. My dad unfortunately had had a heart attack and passed away on the sofa while my son was playing. He couldn’t wake his grandad up so remembered what I had told him and called 999. The lady on the phone asked him for our address and he told her he didn’t know. She asked him if he could go get a neighbour which he did.

I have no regrets about anything to do with my relationship with my dad. We said we loved each other every day, there was nothing left unsaid and nothing left unresolved. He is the only man who has shown me what true love is so far. What unconditional love is, what true support is. I will be forever grateful for that. 

I don’t believe true love always has to be romantic. Trust me, I feel completely besotted with my dogs! They teach me patience, they teach me to live in the moment, they teach me to move on.

Love comes in so many forms! For friends, children, animals! What matters is that we show it. What matters is that we allow it and let it in. What matters is that we remember love comes from all kinds of sources. 

What i try to remember on a daily basis is that we never know what is around the corner. Life can change in an instant. So tell people what you need, tell people how you feel, live as if every interaction you have could be the last you have with that person. Always leave people better than you found them. 

It’s so easy to say now and when you’re in a heated discussion forget entirely. You’re allowed to be angry, annoyed, upset, just remember that those feelings don’t last forever. But true love does. 

And as life can be gone in an instant, if I didn’t wake up tomorrow…I don’t want people to remember me as all the usual stuff. She was kind, she was happy she was blah blah blah.

I want to be remember as the woman my dad raised! Someone who doesn’t take rubbish from anyone, someone who stands up for what she feels is right, someone who refuses to be quiet in a world where people are trying to silence her, label her as hysterical, hormonal and over emotional. I want to be remembered as difficult, causing a nuisance to the people who have tried to scare her into backing down when she is trying to bring them to justice; someone who will get louder every time you try to bury the truth I am determined to bring to light.    

My dad gave me so much in life and left me with an awful lot of guidance. I believe he is still guiding me now in a different way and I will be forever grateful until we are together again.