Muristek
A moment that changed me: finding my dad – only to lose him for ever - led me to a profound self-discovery
I only got to spent five days with my father – but it was enough to realise we were both struggling in our own ways. Then a friend made a suggestion …
In October 2017 I received a message from my aunt that my father had died. I had only met him for the first time two years previously, when I was 24. My parents split up before I was born, and when my mother died, I had set out to find him. I travelled from Dublin to Mansfield in Nottinghamshire and spent five days with him, getting to know him. What surprised me was that we were quite similar not just in appearance, but in personality, too. We had the same sense of humour, the same taste in music, food, style, you name it! We even said inappropriate things at the wrong time, something I’ve done since I was a child and always got in trouble for. How was all this possible when we had never met?
I wasn’t used to talking about my feelings but somehow it felt easy and natural to open up to him. My father was very sensitive and told me it was OK to cry, something I have never been comfortable doing. I was brought up with an attitude of “the show must go on” and taking time to let myself express my emotions felt very new to me. My father and I seemed to understand each other on a deep level without really knowing anything about each other at all. It was like looking into a mirror – we were both struggling in our own ways and still had not figured out how to ask for help or where to look.
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