Jenna Knight

Been thinking about my Dad a lot recently, looking at old photos, and came to realise that I don’t have loads of photos of us together but do have loads of him and….the cat. His one true love (after my Mum of course) and who would follow him round the house, sit on his armchair, wait patiently for him everywhere. Irony was ‘no we are not getting another bloody cat’ and they were best friends. Inseparable. Warms my heart looking at these photos, I always thought it was very cute.

I’ve been thinking a lot of late about my Dads strength of charachter, worrying a bit that I wasn’t speaking it into existence enough about the type of man he was. I worry I don’t have enough photos, videos or where I can remember and hear his voice and that panics me.
He was a very gentle, funny, humble, caring, generous, easy going man with questionable dance moves. A real ‘gent’.

When my Dad was sick, I never heard him properly moan. He had a body full of broken bones, constant chemo and drugs and in unfathomable amounts of pain. His take - ‘well, it is what it is’.
When he died, I remember reading such lovely messages from people, one of them saying that my Dad had given them a job when they really needed it, when they were on their knees.
A long time family friend of ours kept a framed photo of my Dad, next to a photo of her son, who had also sadly passed away because to her he was family.

3 and a bit years in I feel like finally some of the dust is starting to settle, I feel more at peace with losing my Dad and at what such a difficult and uncontrollable time it was. Some of the anger (not all of it, lol) is starting to subside.

As the great philosopher Des’ree once sang ‘Life, oh Life…’. It’s a bloody journey isn’t it!!