Rhapsody in Blue

Dear Dad,

You should be here. I have so much to tell you.

There is so much we could re-order and re-frame in our lives with the things I have learnt in the last few months. I see so much of you in what I have read, and I would love so much to have helped you find a way to forgive yourself for never being perfect enough for yourself, and for never understanding why you wanted to hide sometimes.

Tonight I watched a film called Mozart and the Whale about two people with Asperger's. It made cry. I would love to sit you and mum down together and let you see how hard you worked to make yourselves fit and do your best for everyone and try to have a relationship, a life and a family framed by the social expectations of a neuro-typical world. I now know how unbearably hard it was for you and that you did better than everyone because you did it. And you never knew what you were struggling with.

I ache with everything I want to tell you and share with you. I know you loved all of us so so much but I think you would actually like me a little bit better than before too now. You would love my garden and try not to laugh at my photos and I would see your perfectionist's eye finding fault but alway trying to be kind. We would have so much to talk about.


You should be here.

You should be here.


Christopher Wood 16th June 1941- 11th January 2009