So... I've been quiet for a while, huh?

Shortly after I posted my last tweet about Dad's heart attack he had a stroke... and while the doctors were treating him for that they discovered he had pancreatic cancer that had spread to his liver and bowel. He died on Tuesday night.

When he was diagnosed Dad immediately refused treatment - we'd been through that for 3 years with Mum's cancer and he'd always said that if something similar happened to him he'd just hop on a plane to Switzerland and 'get it over with'.

Unfortunately 2020 had other ideas.

Dad hated hospitals. The man spent his entire life helping other people so I figured it was the least I can do to help him go out on his own terms... so Jay and I moved in with him so I could be his full-time carer.

Dad's illness was swift but brutal. The strokes had knocked out big patches of his memory and he swung wildly between 'with it' and confused, scared and exhausted.

I don't want to remember him like that. That wasn't him. So instead I'll remember the man he was before this year:

He was a good man. Quiet and kind and eternally, silently generous without ever wanting recognition or compensation - just the knowledge that he'd made the world a little better.

He taught me how to communicate through doing, not talking, and to love the natural world.

He was also an absolute weirdo dickhead and mad inventor with a ridiculous sense of humour and a penchant for ill-advised workshop experiments. "What happens if...?" *cue small explosion*

He taught me that my gender was unimportant. "Are you going to help me weld this or what?"

(He also taught me why you should never touch a bare lighting wire with your hands. By telling me to touch it with my hands. This was, and I cannot stress this enough, totally and utterly deliberate and he laughed his head off as I learned A Very Important Lesson).

Dad, every part of me that's good came from you. I'd give anything to have just one more year with you. There's so much you had left to teach me and so much fun left to be had.

But I know how lucky I was to have you. I'll do my best to be that person to others.

And I'll most definitely swear at you profusely as we attempt to fix the absolute state you let the house get into. Trust you to leave me with one last CDT project, you prick!

Wish us luck! The kitchen windows are pissing water and storm season just started. 2020 you are a HOOT.

This was by far the hardest thing I've ever done. Dad was only ill for a short while and I'm totally exhausted and mentally broken. Long-term carers (or anyone who cares for the terminally ill) I take my hat off to you. You're stronger than ANYONE gives you credit for.

I'll slowly be coming back to social media and life in general as adjust to whatever that is now. Thanks for bearing with me.

Tell your people that you love them loudly and often. Life's too fucking short for anything else.