Remembering Don

Three years ago today my step-dad Don passed away. It seems such a long time ago, yet it feels as if it happened yesterday. Greer was a baby when he died, and now there are two more grandchildren he hasn't met. So much has happened, and so much has changed, yet I can imagine him walking in here now and I know exactly how he would look, what he would be wearing, and how he would be carrying himself, as if I'd only just seen him last week. I wanted to write this post about him, to honour him and remember him. But I can't do any better than what I wrote two days after he died, and read at his funeral, so these are my words.

December 19 2006:
About two years ago I had a dream. I saw Don running, wearing a singlet and a number on his chest, and I saw him run through the finish line, with his arms raised high and the biggest smile on his face. And I woke up crying, I cried and cried. I woke up pat and told him, crying. “Ring him” he said, so I did. “Don I just want you to know I love you” I said, crying. The poor man he would have wondered what on earth I was going on about. “Yes dear, I know dear” he said, and I could hear him smiling.

That dream never left me and the next day I was thinking about it and I suddenly thought, Don has finished his race! He’s done it! And I thought, maybe his race was to see me and Joy grow up, to be the man in our lives that would help us get ready for our lovely men to come. What if that was his race – to be our first man, and mum’s darling husband! He put up with our teenage selfishness and moodiness, and he made friends with us. Bought us KFC and doughnuts and got out videos for us to watch, he delighted in buying us new clothes and anything else we needed. He shared his music to us. I”ll never forget the time we were driving down to Tauranga, listening to music, taking turns to choose what tape we played, all singing along to a combination of the carpenters, petula clark and rick astley! There were so many things about Don that were strange and unfamiliar to us, but it was amazing how quickly he became so dear to us. By the time he had his second heart attack three years after we got married, I realised just how much I loved him. He was in my heart.

Then the next day after the dream I was talking to pat about it. “You know what I think?” he said “Maybe that means right now Don’s on his victory lap!” And I thought, maybe he is. And now that he’s gone, I really do. I think the last few years for Don were one wonderful victory lap.

And our precious kids, his most treasured grandchildren, they made it a victory lap. Right from the moment they were born he loved and adored them. They lit up his face. Joy and Dan lived with mum and Don for a year, and Anna got to have so many wonderful outings and adventures with Grandad. Anna and Isaac, Ella and Greer, Grandad loved you so so much. He is “Gandad” to Anna, and “Gwandwad” to ella. And they loved him, will always love him.

Don, if you could hear me, I would tell you how grateful I am for your love. Your faithful, constant, dependable love has made me who I am in so many ways. You opened your heart to me at the most difficult stage of my life, you never pushed me away, you never got angry with me, you always made it clear when I had annoyed or frustrated you, but you never held a grudge against me. You always gave me a second chance, you always thought the best of me. I know you were proud of me. And the funny thing is, that in letting you be a dad to me, I have learnt how to have a dad, and how to be a daughter, not just to you, but to my Rog, and for that I can never thank you enough. I may not have said these things before, but I never saw them as clearly as I do now. Watching you go early on Sunday morning, as the sun had just started to rise, has changed me. I see things I could never see before. We watched you take your last breath, and then in the moment you went, we looked out the window to your tenth floor view and saw the lights of the city, shining pin pricks in the darkness, and Lake Pupuke a glinting blue-gold mirror in the sun’s very first ray. It was like I was seeing a new city, in a completely different land. It was beautiful beyond words.

And this is what I think you saw. At 5:25, according to your watch, I think a man with a vaguely familiar face came into hospital room and tapped you on the shoulder. “Would you like to come for a walk with me?” I think he said. You thought about it for a second, and then you said “yeah ok, yep, that’d be lovely.” And together you walked, you so tall and strong and well, striding down the stairs and out towards the lake, away from sickness, and sadness, traffic and deadlines, lawns to mow and windows that need washing, into the glinting blue-gold of a new day.

And the empty space you have left in our hearts is enormous. We haven’t even begun to measure it, to chart its depths and its lows. But would we ever have chosen not to have you, to save us the pain of this loss? No. Not ever. Because even in going you have given us something. Your love lives on in us, and we will spend the rest of our lives so thankful, so grateful to have had you and loved you. You were one in a million.