I lost my dad completely unexpectedly 3 months ago. I absolutely adored him, but we weren’t the sort of family who really told each other how we felt day to day, if you see what I mean (something I have made a point of doing with my own children). However, I know he felt the same back. Some things you don’t appreciate at the time, but looking back (as an adult), you really understand. Maybe it wasn’t so happy at the time, because I didn’t ‘get it’, but looking back I really do.
So my memory would be this:
When I started secondary school I had to take the public bus across town. The bus was filled with rowdy older kids from a neighbouring school and I was the only girl from my school that used the service. I was worried about taking the bus incase they picked on me.
He came up with a plan to try and stop me being afraid. For the first seven weeks of my first year, up until half term, he walked with me to the station where I got on the bus (where he would normally get the train into London). I was embarrassed so we pretended not to know each other, but every day he got on the bus with me, sitting apart from me, so no one knew that he was my dad, but he was there in case these teenagers bullied me. He rode the bus for the twenty minutes into town and we got off at the same stop, all the while pretending not to know each other, but he was watching over me. He then walked the thirty five minutes all the way back to the station back to where we had started from, where he would then get on the train to go to work.
As I say, he did this, without fail, every day for seven weeks to reassure me and make me feel safe. I don’t think I appreciated at the time what a huge inconvenience this was for him. He never complained or made me feel inadequate.
Looking back now it’s a treasured memory. He was not the sort to gush, or make a verbal fuss/tell me how he felt etc. But his actions spoke loud enough.