Our world was turned upside down. Everything will be different, but nothing has changed.
Our future, your future was cruelly taken from us on the day of diagnosis. But yet your life and journey was only just beginning.
Our plans, our dreams, our vision for the boy, the teen and the man you would become was ripped from our aspirations and died that day. And yet the ink had barely dried on your first chapter.
You had not asked for this, or done anything to deserve this - and neither had we ! Why were we being punished? What was the cause, or the cure??
And then, as quick as that - my selfishness stopped.
An inner strength I had conjured from somewhere. The type of strength I had only ever witnessed first hand with your mum during her three pregnancies and your labour.
You were a gift to us, our special boy that completed and elevated our family. You hadn’t changed. You were born with subtle differences. You will grow with differences. You will live with differences. But you will LIVE life to its full we will make sure of it.
My task as your Dad, the most cherished job of any mans career - that has not changed. To protect. To nourish. To care. To love. And most of all, to make you the best that you can be.
It’s no different than the expectations we set ourselves for your two sisters.
They will probably achieve more than you. See more places than you. Experience more than you. Meet more people than you. But they share that same twinkle in their eye and crease in their cheek when you all laugh uncontrollably, or chuckle cheekily. This is unique to our RIO !
Nobody will ever be loved more than you, my boy.
You will never fulfil the expectations that we unfairly set you when we looked at your baby scans and celebrated at your baby shower.
For every football that you may not kick, every song you may not sing, joke you may not tell and every job that you won’t be able to do...please know this - the special space that was left in my heart before you arrived ... is now full and over-flowing!
PMS does not define you. It is a part of you. An important and not insignificant quirk in your DNA... but it will not define you. Live your life, my boy and know that Daddy’s here to catch you with every stumble - and help you find your path.
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