Saturday, June 14, 2008

My dad’s words

It’s the day before Father’s Day 2008 and of course, it makes me miss my dad.

My dad passed away suddenly, two years and four months ago, when I was five months pregnant. The day before he died I remember phoning him up and telling him that the next day I had a doctor’s appointment and then for sure, I would call him straight after to let him know whether he’d be getting a grand-daughter or a grand-son!

He never got to see my daughter, his would-be first grandchild. And I have purposely not written about it until today. I’m not sure why. Perhaps I wasn’t ready, perhaps I tried to forget about, perhaps it still hurts but whatever the reason, here I am, two years and four months later… letting go of this self-imposed writer’s block.

Apart from the kudos of being an excellent father and I could go on and on, what really impacted on me in my adult years was the fact that my dad believed in me “down to the wire.”

He had no doubts about what I would become (even when I did). When I made the leap from corporate life into internet entrepreneurship, there was my dad, (a man who knew nothing about computers, who could not navigate a mouse properly and who hadn’t the foggiest clue about how the internet worked) ready to cheer me on and tell everyone he knew about wwww.trindadweddings.com. He avidly read everything I wrote (he was my biggest critic too!); he attended every event that was important in my life and important for the business. He was an all-out TrinidadWeddings.com trouper.

But above all, in the midst of all the nay-sayers who didn’t think the idea of a local wedding website could fly, he said to me “If this doesn’t work out, you’re qualified, you can go back to the corporate world and make it. In the meantime, go brave!” I’ll never forget that someone had that much confidence in me; and it spurred me on, to do business with a difference.

It’s hard to accept when people close to you die. No matter how ‘prepared” you think you are, you will never really be ready to face the reality of death, especially of a parent. It’s as though a tiny part of you shuts down and never re-opens.

For those of you who are planning your wedding and have lost a parent or parents or any close member of your extended family, let me assure you that they will be there with you in spirit. When good things happen to you on that day, perhaps it’s because they were there as your guardian angels. Now, I don’t have this on authority from God but it’s something that’s a gut feeling of mine and whether it’s true or not, it gives me some comfort and I hope it will give you that too.

For those of you who do have your parents around, please, spend time with them, let them get to know your fiancé(e), try not to bicker about petty stuff related to your wedding planning and try to include them as much as possible in your wedding. It will be worth it in the long-term, stored away in your memory box.

And so as this writer’s block ends, I just want to say – “Dad, I want you to know that I’ve been going brave for four years now with www.trinidadweddings.com and…I don’t intend to stop.”

Go back to http://www.trinidadweddings.com/