I never told you that I love you, but I do. I suppose you knew anyway, I hope so, I really do. You were so special to me, a giant with a smiling face, always kind and understanding. You knew everything, could explain anything. You knew how to fix broken toys, how to mend leaky pipes, build a rabbit hutch - anything. The world was safe when you were there, I wish you could have stayed.

I didn't know how to live after you were gone because I felt so empty and alone. My sisters and my brother and my mother, we were all together all alone and lost. I could not cry because boys don't, do they? And anyway I didn't know what had happened, couldn't understand, nobody told me, nobody spoke much at all after that. We just fell into a habit of silence. A quiet unspoken sorrow. Was it my fault? Did I do something wrong? What should I have said and didn't? What did I say that I should not have? Didn't you know how much I loved you? Each one of us with those same terrible questions, not daring to ask each other, afraid of the answer we might get.

As I grew older I became angry with you. You had no right to do that. You deserted me. Why? Was I so worthless? I knew - I thought I knew - that you prefered my brother and he loved you more than I did, it seemed to me, but you left him too. And my sisters. And my mother. Why did you do that? My little sister looking out of the front room window one day soon after you had gone said "Here comes daddy." Nobody spoke, nobody moved, we all knew she was mistaken. We all knew you would never come home again.

In time I grew to understand. Little by little the pieces came together. The childhood memories revisited with an adults eye. The little house where we children were so happy was just a squalid two-up-two-down in a tumbledown terrace. The playground we used so innocently a bomb site, dead houses, only the scrubby lilacs remained. You unable to work through illness and depending on my mother for support. We were nearly destitute and you had to watch your wife going off to work to put food on the table. The engineer, the merchant seaman, the long distance lorry driver, the jack of all trades (master of none my mother said). All through the war to a land fit for heroes and now you couldn't feed your children. And another child on the way. Yes, I know about that now. Drip, drip, the pieces fit. So it all got too much for you didn't it? The weight of all those problems with no hope of solution. Life wasn't worth living any more, so you ended it.

You coward! Why couldn't you bend your back and bear it like so many other people did? You were not the only man to suffer hardship in those times in that street - in many streets - of that city. But you couldn't see it through, just be there and do your best. You left us to struggle on alone. You took the easy way out.

Harsh words but not said to wound, it's just the way I felt for a long time. I was angry for years because anger is easier than the unbearable sorrow that you left me. It took a long time and a lot of heartache to lose that anger and to learn to trust people again, to be close to someone without holding up a shield. Through the years I have come to know unhappiness and pain and the desperate loneliness that depression brings. I understand more now how you must have suffered to do the cruel thing that you did. But I also know of the unintended misery you left behind. Did you know that would happen? I don't think you really did. You really thought that we would be better off without you. I'm sorry that you were so alone. I wish I could have shown you just how much I loved you. That you were important just for being you, not for your work or your money or even for the toffee that you made so well. I love you then and now and for what it's worth I forgive you - if I have the right.

It's hard to think of the things I need to say, there's so much to tell you. I am married now to a beautiful woman who loves me dearly and I love her, she is strong and wise and knowing. She makes my world alright. We have a daughter - she's grown up now too - and we love her very much. I wish I could have shown you your granddaughter I know you would have loved her and she would have loved you. That is all there is really, love, nothing else. Without it everything else seems quite pointless. You lost yours somewhere along the way and that's why you couldn't go on. I was too young to know about it then when happiness seemed to revolve around ice-cream and sweets and listening to "Journey Into Space" on the radio. But all those things are a cosy side effect of family love. You missed it somehow, maybe we weren't strong enough then to make you feel it. I wish........... I wish.

Rest in peace, Dad

Your Loving Son,