I first met David Walls 26 years ago roughly 5 seconds after I was born. *pause for
laughter* I don’t have a very vivid memory of it, but I’m almost certain he made a joke.
Obviously, I think most people would agree that 26 is too young to lose your father. I
would agree with you in principal, but I suppose one of the great mysteries of life if when
your time will be. I remember when I was 5 years old and I came to realise that my
parents would one day day. I was lying in bed and just had this image in my mind of my
parents’ gravestones. I remember running downstairs and hugging Dads legs. I’ve
never known anybody to die before, and I’ve never been to a funeral, but I feel that it
was my father’s never ending stream of advice that prepared me for a situation like this.
My father was an important source of wisdom for me. I remember specifically when I
was a teenager, I would spend hours on the phone to him asking him for advice. I don't
think be realised it, but the most important thing he ever said to me was to feel how you
feel.
Over the years those words stuck with me and came to develop into the guiding
principles that allowed me to love and accept myself, to stop trying to be somebody and
to just be myself, to stop expecting other people to be a certain way, and accept them
for who they were.
It was my father that gave me the tools to be a happy person, and the person I am
today. And the best thing he did was to teach me to appreciate the present by doing
what it was I wanted. He would always emphasise to me not to live my life feeling
beholden to other, but to look inside yourself and feel out truly what it is you want to do,
to do what you think is right in that situation, no matter how much that might fly in the
face of the pressure you may feel other people have put on you.
He taught me to let go of things as if they were water off a duck’s back.
When I was unsure of what to do next, he would always remind me to do what felt right
because life was too short, and he couldn't have been more right.
The last piece of advice I asked my Dad was about a month ago. There was a issue
with some people I knew in Bristol and I acted without consulting anybody. I gave him a
call the same evening to just run it past him. He told me he felt I had done exactly the
right thing in that situation, and told me in a Darth Vader accent that I had learned from
him well. Having that final advice giving experience with him really made me feel as if