7 Questions to Ask Your Dad Before It’s Too Late

I was asked by my eldest daughter to ponder these questions, a set of questions any of us parents or children could answer before it’s too late. We both saw it as a golden opportunity. Our encouragement is for this to pique your own curiosity.

1.     What’s your happiest memory of us?

My happiest memories of my children are the times they laughed with and loved each other, like times in the backyard or at the park when they would run around and play (remember the Monster Game?), or when they imagined living together or close to each other or spending time with each other as adults (and now that’s a reality). Times they just got lost in their own sense of enjoyment with and of each other.

I’m a very fortunate father that I have three adult daughters and one son who is still a child who all deeply love and respect each other, who hurt when a sibling is hurting. This is the father’s wish; that your kids are genuinely sisters and brothers with each other. Another happiest memory is of us pulling together in crisis, and how supported I was when I was devastated by divorce nearly 21 years ago, and how much my children—11, 8, and 5 at the time—got me through those dark early months, and how we re-invented our relationships as father and children.

2.    What were those first few days of fatherhood like?

As three of my four children can attest, being parents now, those first few days in each of my children’s lives were such a polarised mix of the best of joy and amazement combined with dreadful fear that I wouldn’t be enough for the responsibility of fatherhood. It’s that feeling that things have really changed now. And changed in such a significant way that there is no turning back, not that you would want to, but for comfort’s sake sometimes you perhaps would! Those earliest days as a father to my eldest daughter, I just could not believe how this one little baby had won my heart so incredibly and unfathomably.

Time is a funny thing; I can go back to that hospital theatre room and remember like it was yesterday, the birth of my first daughter. There is no drug on the planet (and I have taken a few of them in younger years) that even comes close to the euphoria that I experienced when she was born—(when all my children were born, apart from Nathanael who was stillborn)—when I cut her cord, and when I held her for that first long hour as they were stitching her mother up. All those days are very vivid in my memory still, and I would go back in a flash for a 5-minute sojourn. These memories fill me with the greatest joy.

3.    What have you learned about love and what has it taught you?

The most penetrating lesson I have learned about love is that you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone. And sometimes you don’t know how important things are until it’s too late.

What I’ve learned is that nothing compares to love; no achievement, no possessions, no approval of others even comes close. Without love life is meaningless, and we know this when we are supposed to experience love and there is a void, because life without love is a void.

Losing my first marriage taught me most about love and prepared me for what I really desperately wanted, and that was to be married again and to make family the absolute centrepiece of my life. Most of all I know this about love: it is a verb. Love is truly about service, about giving, about kindness, and patience, and the fruits of the Spirit.

4.    When was the moment you felt most proud of me?

This is such a hard question because there are so many moments that could qualify for answering this one. I have felt most proud of you when you were the kindest person and I got to witness that kindness as it was received by another person, whether it was a family member or someone else, and particularly when I can see that the kindness was coming from you, without any input from me. There are many memories of you as a child like this, and these carry through to today.

There have been key times of achievement where I have been astonishingly proud of you, especially when you studied to become a vet nurse, and succeeded in that field for years. I was also so proud of you that day when you said to me you were making your own decisions around your life partner, and you had the confidence in our relationship to assert your right to make your own decision. And of course, I’ve been proud of you every step of the way in becoming the mother you are today, through the losses and tragic moments of waiting patiently for your beautiful baby, and then to see all this come to pass. I can assure you my darling I have a very, very full heart.

5.    What do you want or wish most for your kids?

It’s always been the same answer to this question, I want you to be happy, grateful with your life, doing what brings you fulfilment and contentedness, and hopefully into the mix, the things you want pivot around family, and I can say with all my heart, I am so proud to be a dad who can see this working in all my kids’ lives.

All I wish for (and this is true in all my kids) is that they contribute to society and are a blessing in others’ lives. I could not be prouder that my kids are living this out.

6.    What’s the nicest thing I’ve ever done for you?

Without question, the nicest thing you’ve ever done for me is consider me, praise me regularly, think of me in so many ways, and to allow me to be your father.

I can remember a time when you were 17 and wanted to go your own way, and it was about the only time that I had to put my foot down, or even needed to, and you respected me, whether it was begrudgingly so or not is beside the point.

The nicest thing you ever did for me was to respect me every step of the way, but I sense this was always a reciprocation, because I always felt you were worthy of respect for the beautiful heart you possess.

7.    What’s one thing you want me always to remember when you’re gone? 

Remember that poem you read at Gran’s funeral, that is what I want you to remember when I’m gone: that I’m not really gone, but I’m still with you in spirit, and one day you’ll get to come to be with me and others you have lost along the way.

I want you to remember that God is for you and can never be against you. I want you to know and relate with God, because without God life is meaningless and lacks any sense of purpose.

God is in life and life is in God. Beginning, middle and end, and everything between. And the only pity is we sometimes only see this or recognise this when God is all we have. In the end, in death, God is all we have. Please remember this.

IMAGE: Photos of my eldest daughter and I in 1993 on the left and 1997 on the right.