I miss you, Dad.

It’s a decade since you left us.

Ten years.

A lifetime.

Your granddaughter’s lifetime.

I know you were already so proud of her in the little time you had together, but you would be even more so now.

She’s smart, kind, beautiful – Just amazing!

I’ve long said the only thing I wanted to be in life was as good a father as you were – You set such a high standard by just being you – Kind, caring, loving, supportive.

I ask my daughter if I’m a good dad and she says I’m the best, so I must be doing something right. And I just do those same little things, too – Be supportive, loving, help out.

There has been a lot of that over the years:

• Taking her Kiwi Cricket team throughout primary school – Not because I wanted her to play cricket – She wanted to play it because I do.
• Always going to her sports/gymnastics/dancing/aerials practices and performances.
• Going on school outings and camps.

I’ve (humorously) convinced her that there is a “Parenting Rule Book” (‘Rule One, Line one, Page one: “You MUST embarrass your child at every opportunity”!’), but we all know there is no such thing. It’s always been almost purely seat-of-your-pants stuff, hasn’t it?

I still wish you were here to lend a hand, give advice from when I was her age, or just tell me I’m doing OK.

Because as you get older it seems like you’re constantly told you’re wrong (even when you aren’t), but so seldomly told you’re doing well.

It starts to drag you down after a while.

While you were my hero and I aspired to be like you, I don’t want to be EXACTLY like you.

I remembered when you got made redundant from the NZED in my last year of primary school.

Last year was your granddaughter’s last year of primary school, and while I wasn’t under threat of redundancy, unlike so many thousands of public servants last year, I still felt lost and trapped after commemorating 20 years in the exact same job with no advancement, which has hindered the search for new jobs.

Feeling guilty that you have a secure job that is slowly driving you mad when others are losing their income source is rather brain-busting.

But it has had advantages – My work doesn’t care about developing me, so I’ve taken every bit of leave I can to help my daughter develop and experience new things.

The absolute best parts of last year were being one of the parents that accompanied her year group’s camp to Wellington for a week, and helping out when her class went sailing on Ahuriri Estuary.

Such brilliant kids!

I just hope we can provide them with the future they deserve, not the imminent apocalypse our current crop of global leaders appear hell-bent on driving us towards just to benefit their own financial enrichment.

I’m not sure what you would have made of a global pandemic, Cyclone Gabrielle cutting Napier off from the rest of New Zealand for a week, or current global politics.

I doubt Mum could have coped with the stress of the pandemic alone.

Did you get to see Mum again?

I like to think I saw the two of you together again, in a way, the morning after she died.

I hope she’s happy wherever you are if that is the case.

This year will be my 20th wedding anniversary.

You two made it to 37, but we had a 13-year head start by comparison.

Like parenting I wonder how we do it sometimes. A few of our fellow school year’s parents have parted ways since primary school started.

Similarly, we don’t make anywhere as much as other families, yet still somehow manage to live comfortably on a single income like our family did growing up when others I know are earning far more individually and are on two incomes yet still seem to struggle.

I sometimes wonder if we are doing something right or wrong.

Admittedly, unlike us, most of them have more than one child, and I guess the extra costs and things like childcare must be taking a lot out of that income.

You never really know what others are going through, eh?

Do you hear me when I talk to you? I do it almost every day.

Asking your opinion, guessing what you’d say in similar situations, apologizing when I stuff something up.

I spent about 80% of my time quietly muttering “Sorry, Dad” while clearing out the garage and your shed of all the will-be-handy-some-day stuff you had collected over the decades when I was getting our old home ready for sale.

In the end there was a couple hundred dollars’ (and kilos) worth of metal, brass, nuts and bolts, old nails, copper pipe, wire and electrical bits and bobs across the various sheds and back yard that I took to the metal recyclers.

There was a lot of heavy physical lifting, and a lot of emotional weight – So many memories in those sheds.

I kept a lot of your hand tools, and those little plastic drawer sets full of new, unused nails, screws, rivets, etc.

I figure they will be handy someday…

I even repurposed some of the recycled native wood you had lying around into frames for some of the other gems I discovered.

It felt like a very “Dad” thing to do.

Speaking of making things you’ll be pleased to know your skilled woodworking genes that lay dormant for most of my life have finally kicked into gear!

The sheds are all gone now. And so are the back yard’s old features – The rotary washing line, the ancient lemon tree, the camelia you successfully moved from one side of the yard to the other. The tree outside your shed you would work in the shade of (I’ve kept bits of that for various modeling projects, so its memory lives on).

I’ll be honest – Even as a grown-ass 47-year-old I’m still struggling emotionally with losing my childhood home.

It gives us financial freedom and secures my family’s future (for a while at least).

That feels like a very “Dad” thing to do, too.

But it feels like I’m losing a bit more of you all over again.

A week or so after you died, I crumpled onto the floor where my wife was feeding our daughter because I realised I’d never get to hug you ever again.

Ten years later I could still really do with that hug.

Miss you, Dad.

Love you.

Andrew