Thanks for setting this up guys, I really appreciate the chance to share about dads life.

A sombre post to start with and then it will be about celebrating and laughing about what dad achieved and what dad got up to.

This is dad eating his hospital ‘just in case’ favourite lunch (salmon sandwiches) and his Beano flask of tea not forgetting a Kitkat or two of which Sue put all together for him on the Tuesday before he passed. We’d just seen the eye consultant and we’d had bad news that the transplant donor material was being ‘awkward’ and had detached itself and was floating free in dads only eye so another corrective procedure was needed in the operating theatre; the eye care team also decided that dad needed to stay with them so to get things right once and for all to complete the eye surgery stage. He had about 50cm of vision at this moment. Being the real battler that he is he was not fazed so we picnicked in the hospital waiting until we had a slot in the operating theatres. During this time we spoke about how different this stay in hospital was going to be for the both of us, as in the past when dad has needed a hospital stay I am able to be right at his bedside; this was different with no visitors going to be allowed on the ward so we knocked our heads together literally and made a plan of what he was going to focus on being on the inside and what I was going to focus on being on the outside. We parted a few hours after this photo at the doors of the actual operating theatre of which I should have not even had this access. During his stay it was near impossible to talk to him on the phone as his hearing aids had been lost so he just spoke down the phone, keeping me up to speed about developments. The next time I saw him was the fateful morning and we had a couple of hours together before he passed away in no pain in my arms.

We were best buddies and over the coming days and weeks I’ll share what a great dad he was.