This is my last post on lesson learned from my dad which are his gift to me. I am my father’s Gift.  I say this with #humilty.

I dedicated each day this month to recount some of the lessons I’ve learned from my dad.

While I’ve been reflecting on lessons learned I can’t help but also reflect on what I’ve accomplished through the last decade.  Someone once said #grief will either break you or make you. I realised how painful and powerful grief can be, and I embraced my grief.

If my father was writing about me he would say I’ve come a long way.

As the famous song goes he’s the power behind my wings.

My Dad was my emotional why for my London marathon in 2018. I got a tattoo on father’s day. I experimented and discovered coaching. I completed the ILM 7 accreditation to coach  and mentor senior professionals.

I discovered I could write so I  wrote blogs to make sense of my pain and this became a book.

I lost my fear of failure through grief and learnt to pivot to find my new purpose. When I was a child my dad introduced me to our first German shepherd dog called Asha. Most of my adult like this was a memory sat in my  psyche hardly referred to but when lockdown came my German Shepherd pup Oscar, and I found each other, as if to complete the circle of life, or join the dots. What my dad started continues.

To live on purpose we need a strong emotional why. For me my path is clear, in all that I do and wish to become I want to make my dad even more proud of me. I want to be the daughter he so deserves.

Today is exactly ten years to the day of my father’s death. He remains in my heart. His absence is chiselled in my soul but I’ve grown around it to keep doing my dharma.

Thanks to everyone who has followed my reflections here I genuinely appreciate you. Thank you for your comments and likes. I also want to thank those who shared their feelings about my dad, and theirs too. It’s funny but when we bare our soul and show our vulnerability indirectly,  others find the power to share their truth.

Thank you.

Sine die. My dad and I used to say this a lot as the story never ends and as the great T.S. Elliot said ” We shall not cease from exploration. And the end off all our journey will be to arrive where we started. And know the place for the first time”.

#lessonslearned
#mydad
#lifepurpose
#leadershiplessons

He loved to get up early to do his meditation and yoga before he would make our morning tea.  Dad was always conscious of his health. He ate food in moderation and was always slim built and whenever we walked together, I was always having to catch up with him. He would say brisk walking is the best. I firmly believe it  was his discipline that kept him in good stead for he never took any medicine, not even after he was diagnosed with prostate cancer.

He gave up smoking one day after someone made a comment and he never smoked again. He maintained a good health but despite that and probably due to life stressors, he had a severe heart attack at the age of 76, that is when he was forced to retire from his business.  I recall my dad telling me how after his colossal heart attack when he nearly died, the doctor told him not to wrap himself in cotton wool ever since, walking became a religion to him come rain or shine he would go for his walk.

Yoga and pranayama (deep breathing exercises) were very important to him so much so that we went to a yoga camp in Bolton. We would set off at 3.30am to drive there and the camp would begin around 5am. We did this for a whole week but after that I gave up, but he didn’t.

He was around 80 when we moved into our new build Town House, and I recall after our shopping my father would climb the stairs like a young man and I would be far behind him such was his energy.

My dad had a minor stroke and became wheelchair bound that made him very frustrated, he lost the use of one arm, but he was determined to walk around the block even if it took him a whole hour to do a walk which he previously did in 10 minutes. He was a very determined man, and stubborn sometimes, now I know where I get these traits from!

On My dad’s 95^th birthday I got him 95 gifts of which he got a mobility scooter. I remember one day I came home, and I could not see his wheelchair and realised the scooter was not in the garage either. My heart sank only to then see my father come into our drive looking like a boy racer with sunglasses on and wearing his slippers while riding his mobility scooter, he looked at me and complained the scooter was too slow.  I will end on this funny note.

If this post makes you smile, please like, repost, and share with your thoughts. Thank you.

© DMP

After my father passed, it was a no brainer for me that I wanted to give something back so becoming a volunteer with this charity felt right.  I am really grateful that I had an opportunity through this charity to meet my friend, Maureen.

Maureen was a spirited soul, a Yorkshire lass like me so she had a no-nonsense approach to life which I admired so much. In her youth she was a Samaritan and she was a decent Christian soul. During our calls we would put the world to right. We would sometimes laugh out loud imagining her sat on her recliner somewhere in Paris with a glass of red wine in hand posing for a photograph to go on Facebook (oh yes, my friend was familiar with Facebook, she even had an IPad), and sometimes we would talk about serious subjects like death and dying alone.  We even talked about what happens after death.

The lockdown was a difficult time for us all, and we both found comfort by talking to one another through these weekly calls. Maureen loved going to her local church and during the first and second lockdown this was not possible. She missed this very much as when we are going through uncertainty, if we believe in a higher being, we turn for spiritual guidance to help us through. However, we talked about these difficult subjects, and it helped because each time we had a heart to heart, Maureen would say ‘thanks love for calling’.  Like my dad and that generation, you were not complimented in so many words, but you knew that the friendship was appreciated by both parties. 

On our 250th call I remember saying to Maureen that it was our 250th call anniversary. I thanked her for putting up with me and she laughed and said, ‘you are not that bad’.  The fact that we managed to have regular calls is indicative that those calls were helpful. To begin with I thought naively that I was giving something back but the reality was Maureen gave me so much in return. She parted her wisdom, and her kindness was evident in how she viewed life in general. Often, she would feel unwell, but she always had an attitude of the glass is half full. She would say there are people out there who have nothing so we must be grateful for everything we are blessed with, and that is so true. 

Old age is hard going so to keep making an effort when it is so hard deserves an applause.   I witnessed my friend from being this fiercely independent lady who used to drive her car and take her friends to the local supermarket for their weekly shopping, to having to give up her car and then having to use a 3-wheel walker to get around. Maureen never stopped trying to make an effort so much so that she would walk down the stairs to get some exercise. 

For me, my father’s passing was a watershed in my journey of self-discovery, and it is through this journey that I got to meet this wonderful friend of mine. I am so grateful to Maureen for coming into my world and I want to send a message to her that she unknowingly enriched my life in more ways than she can possibly imagine. Rest in peace my friend and thank you for allowing us to walk with each other for the past 6 years.  Grief has visited me again and though, in my heart I knew this day would come, after I heard she had passed I had a quiet cry. The loss I feel is deep down, the loss of an unlikely friendship that turned into a precious soulful connection which I will cherish forever. Thank you, God, for this beautiful encounter, and thank you Dame Esther for this friendship gift that brought so much joy through your charity, the Silverline. 

If you are reading this and feeling your own loss you will know each time, we suffer a loss we appreciate life even more. 

Peace be with you.

©DMP

2nd November 2022.