“Life is good and I’m so grateful that my dad got to see this part of it, he can be at peace knowing where his son is now.”

In 2019 I went to live with my father after I had stopped seventeen years of drug use. I was still on methadone at my dad’s, I had tried to come off it but I could not manage it. So I planned to come to Walk, get off methadone and then go back home to live with dad.

I had applied to Walk and was waiting for a space to come available. As I waited we found out my dad had cancer and that the doctors said he had eighteen months to live. We got that news two weeks before Christmas, two weeks after Christmas Walk called and told me they had space.

My dad said I should take the place, go and make a life for myself and not come back. I made him a deal. I said I was going to Walk to get off methadone, get a place, get a job and then he could come and visit me and I’d take him to see Manchester United play at Old Trafford.

Long story short, I managed to do all that at Walk. So my dad came to visit and we went to a game together. At the end of his visit I took him to the train station and that was the last time I saw him before he passed away.

Neither of us knew how to do that goodbye. We both knew it was the last time we would see each other but neither of us knew how you do that? What do you say? What do you do?

How do you even begin to put it all into words? It was so difficult, but in the end I was glad I could show him that his son was doing alright and, more than that, his son was going to stay alright.

I did not have a plan beyond getting off methadone and getting to a football game with my dad. But I have a plan now, I’m learning how to build boats. The yard has been a perfect place for me, it was somewhere I could learn new skills, do something fulfilling and stay busy, which I needed around the time of my dad passing.

I love Walk, and because of Walk I now love making boats. I’m not going to stop until I know how to build an entire boat. Life is good and I’m so grateful that my dad got to see this part of it, he can be at peace knowing where his son is now.