A daughter’s story of family, loss, resilience and finding myself at forty.
It’s Saturday afternoon, the rain has just stopped and i am looking out the big bay window, that has been my childhood home since i was born, day dreaming about the past year and i heard the voice of my late dad ‘you’ll be on your own cocker’ i remember replying with something like, ‘it’s ok dad, i always was wasn’t I?’
I don’t think I ever really thought about what he was trying to tell me that day in the garden whilst enjoying the spring sun of 2025 until now.
It was the day he handed me the deeds for the house and the documents for the car. He told me to fill out the car documents and get it in my name. We did the documents together and I held them and did nothing with them. I remember thinking ‘I wonder what is going on? What does he know that I don’t?’ I was held in secrecy, not to tell my sisters and not to do anything. I sat for a while, looking at this man that had been my whole world for all my life. It was then I realised that dad did know something I didn’t. He knew that his time to sit round the table of angels was coming and he was trying to prepare me for what I was heading into.
Dad died in November that year, which I will go into detail about in another blog. For now I’d like to sit and smile remembering how my dad secretly prepared me for his departure. The last thing he did for me has turned out to be the most powerful journey of self discovery and healing. For this I am forever grateful to my dad.
I am the youngest of 3. Not just the youngest but the baby. There are 18 years between me and my eldest sister and 16 between me and the middle sister. I was raised in the house as an only child. I was always close with dad, we spent so much time together. Raising and showing horses, visiting farmer friends and working. Dad taught me how to do pretty much any manual job there is, I even worked for my dads business tiling when I was in my 20’s. The years that you don’t think will ever be memorable but they are now. Sitting in his combo van, eating sandwiches and drinking tea, putting the world to rights and what I know now as preparing me for life. Dad was a man of very few words, but what he did say was always powerful and had meaning. Dad was a true animal lover, he spent his life longing for a farm, unfortunately mum had different ideas!
Looking back now, I think ‘you’ll be on your own cocker’ wasn’t a warning. It was dad’s way of telling me that one day I will have to stand on my own two feet. What neither of us realised was that the journey was not just about losing him and mum. It would be about finding myself through grief, loss, pain, and probate.
As i sit here now, over a year later, looking out of this window he looked out of daily, i realise dad was right.
Not because I am alone.
But because for the first time in my life, I have to learn who I am without being somebody’s daughter, somebody’s carer, somebody’s problem solver or somebody’s safety net. There is going to be no 259, the house that always swallowed my fears and worries.
It’s a fresh book, not a fresh chapter, and it’s all mine to write.
On Your Own Cocker 