10/07/2025
Story Time
At the age of fifty, Mark thought he’d be prepared to lose his father. After all, dad had been unwell for years. But nothing prepared him for the quiet that filled the house after the funeral. No more sarcastic and humourous comments when their respective football teams were playing. No more long chats over a beer at the weekend…and no more phone calls asking him to pick something up.
In the weeks that followed the funeral, he tried to keep busy. He cleared out the garage, swept the workshop floor, and sorted through drawers of old souvenirs. Each object was a small monument to his dad’s life. As he picked up his father’s watch, he thought about the times they had spent, just the two of them and slipped it onto his own wrist.
Some mornings, Mark still woke expecting he’d hear his dad humming in the kitchen. The two years his father lived with him had passed in a flash. Mark stopped what he was doing and sat in his father’s chair by the window, letting the memories flow. He learned not to fight these feelings. Each one a story he could carry with them, even if they hurt.
Once a week, he drove to the cemetery. At first, he stood awkwardly by the grave, hands shoved into his coat pockets, feeling embarrassed by the lump in his throat. But over time, the visits became a comfort. He started bringing a flask of coffee, sipping slowly as he told his dad about work, about the kids, about the small, unremarkable things dad would have cared about. The things that are seemingly unimportant, but in those moments, they were priceless.
Mark began to realise that grief wasn’t something to conquer. It was a companion that would walk beside him, sometimes in silence, sometimes whispering reminders of times in the past and the love he had always been given.
On what would have been his dad’s eighty-first birthday, Mark invited his sisters over. They cooked dad’s favourite meal: roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, gravy thick as memory, all the trimmings! They poured a glass of whisky each, raised them in a toast.
“To Dad,” Mark said.
“To Dad,” they echoed.
The ache in his chest didn’t disappear. But that night, as he rinsed the glasses and set them to dry, he noticed it had softened just a little. He realised that although the pain was still there, he could carry it as a part of him, never moving on, but still moving forward.
