Dear Dad

There has been so much that I wanted to say to you which has remained unsaid.

In recent times, I have felt within me a necessity to hold back the things about me which, if are already known to you, are unacknowledged between us.

Sometimes when I am in your company, I feel a sense of anxiety because between us there is a gulf which I have created in response to an unmet need which I have perceived.

I have been curious in recent visits to see you, to quietly traverse that gap, to focus on you rather than me. It is the only way that I can heal the unspoken rift between us.

I see in you, a man of immense courage, deep gentleness and humility and I have come to appreciate the limits to your capacity which I have previously failed to recognise or acknowledge.

I needed a father who would confront my gay sexuality at a time when your intervention would have helped me to bear its weight, but to blame you for not doing so, as I have done, is to have missed crucially the support you have offered me in ways which you were capable of.

I have come to understand that this gulf between us, of my making, is the gap between my needs and your capacity , which were limits imposed on our relationship which were not designed by you to hurt me.

Whilst driving home from work one night last week, I experienced the very essence of you, strongly in my heart.

Of course, I felt ashamed for holding you at arms length from me, in a slightly superior way,  which had hitherto failed to credit you in my mind and heart ,for all that you have done for me.

The example you have set before me during your long life, and your many virtues of honour, faithfulness in marriage, faith, modesty, strength, gentleness, patience and above all love.

My truth unspoken will not be a gulf between us of my own making in the time we have left, be it long or short, rather it will be accommodating in experiencing your life as a gift from which my own life has its origins and its onward path.

My next blog will be: Flight App

William Defoe