I was eight years old when my mum left home. She walked to the end of the street, caught a black cab, and never came back. My brother was just five.
After that day, everything changed in our house. My dad started doing things he’d never had to do before: getting up early to make breakfast, learning how to use the washing machine, ironing school uniforms, awkwardly brushing our hair before school. I watched him get the porridge measurements wrong, burn the toast, and forget to separate whites from colours in the wash. But he always made sure we had everything we needed. Hed come home exhausted from work, sit down to check our homework, sign our reading diaries, and prepare lunchboxes for the next day.
Mum never came back to visit us. Dad never brought another woman home. He never introduced anyone as his girlfriend. We knew he sometimes went out, and occasionally came home late, but anything about his personal life was kept outside the walls of our house. At home, it was just me and my brother. I never heard him say hed fallen in love again. His routine was work, home, cook, laundry, bed, and then all over again.
At weekends, hed take us to Hyde Park, down by the Thames, or to the shopping centreeven if it was only to look at the shop windows. He taught himself how to braid hair, stitch buttons, and pack school lunches. When we had school parties and needed costumes, he made them out of cardboard and old sheets. He never complained. He never said, Thats not a dads job.
A year ago, my dad passed away. It happened so quicklythere was no time for long goodbyes. As we sorted through his things, I found old notebooks filled with lists of household expenses, important dates, reminders like pay school fees, buy new shoes, take Lydia to the GP. There were no love letters, no photos with another woman, no traces of romance. Only evidence of a dad who lived his life for his children.
Since hes been gone, one question keeps resurfacing in my mind: was he ever truly happy? Mum left to chase her own happiness. Dad stayed, and it seems like he gave up on his. He never built a new family, never had a home with a partner again, and was never a priority for anyone except us.
Now I realise I had the most wonderful father. But I also see that he was a man who chose to be alone so that we wouldnt have to be. And that weighs heavy on me. Because now, with him gone, I dont know if he ever received the love he truly deserved.
