A lot can happen in 10 years.

For me, I got married, bought my first home, had two beautiful children, watched one sister graduate and the other excel in her career. Celebrated milestone birthdays (the big 3-0) and a big 6-0 for the mother. But with the highs come the lows and in-between all of this we lost loved ones, as you do along the way.

10 years marks the length of time passed since our dear Dad took his own life, on 20th July 2015. As I sit here writing this I’ll never be able to tell you how we got through that time in our life and to think 10 years have now passed is crazy because the memories are so vivid it feels like only yesterday.

I still think of him every day. I see him in my reflection the older I’m getting. I see him in my kids faces every time I look at them. I hear his voice singing the lyrics to his favourite songs when I play them to remember him. I think of all the things he’s missed out on. He had the best years of his life ahead of him. This year would also have marked his 60th birthday.

The last time I saw my Dad alive he was 49 years old. It was April 2015. He’d picked my mum and I up from Gatwick airport after a girly holiday to Egypt and dropped me back home to London where I lived at the time with my boyfriend (now husband). He then drove Mum and himself back home to Wales. He was a very selfless man, always doing things for those he cared about. As I got out the car that evening we shared what would have been our last hug (little did I know it at the time). Because I lived almost 2 hours from our family home it meant I didn’t see my family as much as I’d liked.

Fast forward to Monday 20th July 2015 and I’m walking to work - My phone vibrates in my pocket, I look at the screen and it’s a message from my Dad. I open the text and it says ‘I love you baby girl, don’t you ever forget that xxx’ – now it wasn’t out of character for my Dad to send messages like that, he was always letting us know how much we loved him. He was the type of man who wouldn’t leave the house without giving his babies and his wife a kiss goodbye and letting us know he loved us. I received that message at 07:28 and replied at 07:36 saying ‘I love you too Daddy, Millions and thousands infinite infinite’s’. Those would have been the last words he’d ever read from me. Without a second thought of anything suspicious I carry on with my day.

On my lunch break I’m taking a walk back through town as I so often did when I worked at Coca-cola because the office was right in the town centre. I’m walking past a jewellery shop which my Dad and I stopped at once (I said I liked a necklace that was in the window and the next thing I know he stopped us all and had gone inside to buy it for me). As I’m walking past this same shop, all of a sudden a wave of images, photo’s, memories go through my mind, all of Dad – then suddenly, my phone rings. That was when I got the call. It was Kayne, (my boyfriend) ‘Chan, it’s your Dad, they found him in his car, somethings happened to him – my mum is coming to pick you up where are you?’ my mind went blank. What did those words mean? Had he had an accident? He must be in hospital – I’ve got to get to him. Although I didn’t quite know then at that point in time exactly what had happened, something in my gut was telling me that he’d gone.

The next few hours, days, weeks were all a bit of a blur. I’d got home to Kayne’s and it was there that he took me upstairs and told me the news – Dad was gone. I still remember the pain of those words like it was yesterday. We got straight in the car and drove to Mum’s where I just remember walking through the front door and me, my mum and sisters all just collapsed into one another. Our bodies dead weights. They sat me down and told me what had happened. How Dad had gotten up and gone to work as he would a normal day. How he had dressed himself very smartly (again not unusual) and went into my sisters and my mum to give them all a kiss goodbye. Later that morning George and Mum had both received calls from Dads boss at work. I remember George telling me that his boss was calling to find out where Dad was and check he was ok because someone that Dad worked with received a strange out of office from him – it said something along the lines of ‘Thank you all for your friendship over the years’. George said to Terry (Dad’s boss) that she was worried that he was going to do something and that she had to find him. Time passed and the police were now searching for Dad but nobody could find him. What seemed like hours later (although it probably wasn’t very long at all) a police man came walking up the drive way with his hat off. They told my mum and sisters that Dad’s car had been located at a nearby service station, and it was then confirmed that Dad’s body was found inside the hotel of the service station. For us, for our family, it was too late. That day our world lost a Dad, a husband, my future kids were robbed of ever meeting their grandfather because Dad had already taken his life. I was 23 years old.

I’m sharing my story now because I’ve not yet had the opportunity to do so, it’s always been our families’ recollection of the day as a whole, as opposed to what I lived and experienced personally.

Losing a parent to suicide is something very difficult to come to terms with, maybe you never can. The trauma and torment that they must have been going through is ended for them, but for you it’s just beginning. The pain changes you. Thoughts of ‘was it something I did’ ‘could I have saved him?’ ‘should I have seen him more then maybe I’d have noticed signs?’ stay with you forever. Then follow the feelings of rejection. That your Dad left you. The same way his Mum left him when he was a baby put up for adoption.

Since then I lost another person, very dear to our family to suicide. My sister Georgie’s best friend James. The guy who held all of our hands throughout the grief and devastation of the loss of our Dad. The guy who turned up at our house every day for months with food, drink, cigarettes and a shoulder to cry on. This guy was like a brother to us and he was my sisters ride or die. James took his own life in January 2024 so not only am I doing this in memory of my Dad, I’m doing it in memory of James too.

Time is by no means a healer. In fact, it brings with it more unanswered questions of what went wrong and what could have been. It pushes you further away from the last moments you shared with them. The aftermath of Dad’s suicide wasn’t just the devastation of when he left us and the short time afterwards, it was many things to come in time that he (and I) missed out on. Moments that should have been shared. The father daughter dance at my wedding. The calling your old man when the engine light comes on in the car to seek his help/advice. The support of a Dad to his child when they move into their first home and the renovations he should have been there to help with. It’s the difficult conversations with your children one day about why Granddad decided he no longer wanted to live anymore. It’s becoming a parent yourself and never understanding how your own could leave you and think you’d be ok with it. It’s watching other grandparents with their grandkids and feeling angry at what was robbed from you. It’s countless conversations with yourself in your head in dealing with your grief because time has passed and you don’t want to burden others with the conversation any more. The thing about suicide, is that it can always be prevented. They were never supposed to go. It wasn’t their time. The thing about suicide is that the victim should always be saved. They deserve to be saved.

I’ll be kick-starting my fundraising by taking part in Tal Booker’s 24 hour tattoo-a-thon on Saturday 7th June. I am pleased to share that I will also be taking part in the Trek for Tomorrow with CALM x Danny Jones and trekking 20 miles across the Peak District on Sunday 7th September. So please please get donating as every penny you can spare will help me reach my £5000 target <3

I am planning lots more activities throughout the year and all to raise money for the charity CALM, who without realising, have helped me and my sisters a lot over the years through our grief by allowing us to participate in some hard hitting campaigns to raise awareness of suicide and educating the world on how we can all help prevent it.

CALM (Campaign Against Living Miserably) are a suicide prevention charity helping people end their misery, not their lives. People who feel suicidal will often say that they don’t want to die – they want the pain and misery they’re experiencing to end. CALM provide life-saving services, information and advice to help anyone struggling with life to navigate the issues that can make them feel miserable. They have trusted tools that give you practical ways to manage your mental health and they campaign to make sure everyone has the knowledge and skills to unite against suicide.

• £12.20 funds a potentially life-saving call to the CALM helpline

• Suicide is the leading cause of death for young people in the UK

• 1 in 5 of us will have suicidal thoughts in our lifetime

• Someone in the UK dies by suicide every 90 minutes