A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.  Maya Angelou

The 23rd of May would have been Dad’s 65th birthday. I’ve talked a lot about him being ill, his death and how that’s affected me but there’s a big section of his life I’ve not mentioned on this blog until now.  Not because I’ve been embarrassed or ashamed by it, I’ll talk at length with people in person, but because it is something that a large section of the population can’t understand and I didn’t want to have to put up with negative comments that are inevitably on their way whilst coming to terms with a death.

But since it’s been over 6 months since he died and I seem to be doing better, talking about it seemed like a good birthday present.

For the last 4 years Dad has been known not as Donald, but as Dawn.  It’s going to get confusing writing about it because when we found out we asked him what he wanted us to call him and he said that only 5 people in the world could call him ‘Dad’ so we should stick with that.  But with ‘Dad’ comes ‘he’, ‘him’ and ‘his’.  Whenever I talked about him with others I still used male pronouns, but if we were out in public together I did make an effort to use ‘she’ and ‘her’.  But I’m getting ahead of myself…

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