Helping other widows and widowers

When I starting writing this blog - six years ago now – I didn’t count helping other widows and widowers amongst my motives.

I’d lost my wife, and Max his mother, around two years before I started putting letter-shaped pixel to screen.

In those two years my focus, and functions, had been severely limited and didn’t extend much past child rearing protocols.  I managed distractions, embraced them enough to catch a break and some perspective, and combated them when my child really needed my best attention.

Then blogging joined my catalogue of occasional worthwhile pursuits.

I’ll be forever grateful for the suggestion.

It meant I had somewhere to put down my thoughts, my experiences.  Somewhere to discuss situations, a way to better process information and also encouraging the valued input of others.

It was helping me.

I never really thought it would help others reading it.

But it seems it did, and still does.

Emails come in from all over the world, for example, at the weekend they came from Spain, Singapore and Somerset (I should check if any of them would put up with a visit from us).

It’s sometimes very difficult to reply to them all, not least because of time, but because many of the people who’ve been motivated to find Single Parent Dad have stories and situations to share that really need my very best, and finding the right words isn’t always a breeze.

My heart gets conflicted.  Half of it warmed by comments that my writing has in some way helped or inspired someone, the other cooled by the sad realities that are being shared.

One of the mercies I feel I was afforded in abrupt widowhood was that I escaped the inevitability of death, knowing it was on its way, and I was going to have to deal with it.

Darren, who recently got in touch with me, hasn’t been so fortunate.

His wife, Lynn, was diagnosed with cancer at the tender age of 31.  After treatment they were told that children were an impossibility.

Despite that, Lynn did get pregnant and four-years-ago gave birth to their son, Matthew.

A rollercoaster ride of emotions I’m sure, one worsened by the news soon after Matthew’s birth that his Mom’s cancer was terminal.

Four years and more treatment have passed, and Lynn’s condition has more recently been diagnosed as worsening, and Matthew and his dad, Darren, are left with the very real realities and daunting prospects of dealing with that.

On the advice of others, Darren has started a blog.  He doesn’t quite know how much he’ll be writing there, if it will become a permanent thing or what he’ll be writing about, but I thought the least I could do is to try and share it with people who’ve helped me enormously along my own journey.

You can visit Darren’s blog, Here is now, at http://daddydal.blogspot.co.uk/

Hope you can be as much help, internet, as you've been to me.

Go do your thing.

It’s too nice to be inside

How many times have you said that to your children?

How many times did you hear it as a child?

I’m still hearing it as an adult.

We enjoyed a gloriously sunny day at Legoland Windsor - courtesy of our Merlin Annual Passes (cheers Merlin) - on Sunday.  Experiencing their excellent Star Wars weekend, fulfilling a lifelong ambition to sit in Luke Skywalker’s Landspeeder.

Okay, it was a replica with hidden wheels, but still, how cool?

We enjoyed further run-ins with Stormtroopers getting coffee, Wookiees thinking of nipping to buy keyrings of themselves from the Lego shop and even had time for some C3P0 mocking.

'What are you still doing inside?'

As always we had a great time at Legoland, at 8-years-old I think my son may be getting nearer the end of diminished appeal, but by having the excellently organised and no pressure selling Star Wars themed weekend, his enthusiasm didn’t dwindle on this trip.

We were perhaps even more delighted to get home to more glorious weather on Bank Holiday Monday.  A sunny national holiday in the UK, I thought those things were condemned to the Ozone layer/room 101?

But what do we do when we have sunshine?  We have a barbeque of course.

It was great to get out in to the garden, even though we were literally kicked out there by my lovely girlfriend.  Such is my expectation of poor weather, I’m not sure I even know what to do when the sun is out any more.

I instructed Max to do the same, relying on the age-old parenting classic:

“It’s too nice to be in here.”

So he went outside, and hid under his slide with our iPad.

‘Object defeating somewhat, you are’ as Yoda may say.

Still, he was relaxing in the fresh air, and it gave me a moment to enjoy a brief glance over my latest Private Eye.

And it wasn’t long before we were cooking meat, and him arranging a mini-Olympics (London legacy committee take note).

Events included boules and, my boy’s favourite, tag.

But he had a distinct advantage.

Chasing, and trying to get hold of, The Flash in his summer attire wasn’t easy.  Especially as my one-too-many BBQ burgers had put me into a Six Million Dollar Man esq slow-motion mode.

Anyway, we enjoyed our summer while it lasted.

Hope you did too.


After far too many years of thinking about it, I've actually added this post to the rather wonderful Tara Cain's Photo Gallery.  This week's topic is The Weekend.

Being a terrible mum

Perversely being a good mum was not something I dreamed about being as a child, and then as a young man.

My dreams were all about which member of the A-Team I could replace, or who I’d slay first as a Jedi Knight.

They often still are.

I was a recent guest of Radio 5 Live talking about relationships and parenting, as well as plugging my book (Parenting with Balls – soon available at a car boot near you).

We got on to the topic of the perception of single dads, versus that of their female equivalents.

The experts I was on the show with wanted to know why I thought men are generally heralded when they take care of children on their own, whereas women in the same situation – more often – seem to get lambasted and accused of being responsible for all of society’s ills.

I was asked what made me so special.

“Nothing.” I answered, in what must have been the best way to sell a book about my single parenting experiences on a national radio show, EVER.

Unsurprisingly I was asked to elaborate.

Thing is I agree - like many other single dads I know - I think that single mums do get a rough deal, but in a roundabout fashion, so do us fathers, and I wish it was the same for both of us.

Even if it means treated us both like crap.

I said I yearned – desperately at one point – to be considered a terrible parent, a terrible mother even (Stop it, Amazon won’t be able to keep up with the demand).

It may seem a smidge ridiculous, wanting to be criticised rather than praised for my parental skills, but to me it would have been a sign of acceptance, in certain situations, if not one of endorsement.

See, I’m sure a lot of the kind words projected at me were genuine and well meant, but there were lots that can’t possibly have been.

From first sight it must have been impossible to tell whether I was doing a half-decent job of caring for my boy, and whether I was motivated into doing it for me or for him. At the beginning even I couldn't be 100% sure.  And to claim that I was doing a brilliant job was really jumping to positive conclusions, at times.

Or was it?

Was that all about my gender?

If I’d been a woman my parents would have called me Claire, not that I needed to share that particularly   would folks been more confident to be critical of me?

To treat me like a single mum?

My feeling was that it was patronising at times, and it was almost like, he’s doing the best he can, for a man, obviously he’d not be able to rub shoulders and stand equal with mums doing the same thing, but bless him.

This isn't to say I wasn't grateful for the well meant, and clearly genuine words I was offered, but at times I did wish that my lack of vagina could be ignored.

Paranoia probably didn’t help that.  With confidence at an all time low, given the intense and sudden loss I was dealing with, I’d perhaps jump to a negative conclusion a little too easily.

But I hope I made my point and still believe it was a valid one.