Hi Dad,

Today as you know is my 24th birthday and although we’ve never made a huge deal out of birthdays as a family, this year will be a pretty big one for me. Not because of my age or any milestone but because this will be the first one without you.

It’s a pretty difficult concept to get my head around that this year I won’t receive a card, a text message or call from you wishing your “Laura-Lou” a happy birthday. The void that I feel today no one else will ever fill, nor should they, it will serve as the constant reminder that I had someone so great in my life that they can never be replaced. However I don’t want to focus on what’s not here today,  instead I thought i’d share some of your photography with the world (all of  these photos i’ve only recently stumbled across). These photos have inspired me dad, to look at the world and capture it the way you did because you really did have a talent for capturing the beauty in what is around us.

So Thank you for these photos, maybe had you still of been here I may have never stumbled across them or even still, been blind to the little things around us that I now know are so important.

This year and many years to come I will consider these my gifts from you. Because these photographs give me the opportunity to see the world again through your eyes and they will forever give me some lasting connections to how you viewed this world we no longer share.

I’m so so proud to be your daughter, half of what I am and what I will achieve will always be half you. This year my birthday won’t be about celebrating me, it will be about celebrating you. Thank you for giving me this day and from now on it will be a day I always share with you.

I miss you deeply but heres to us. Happy our day Dad.

Love Laura- Lou

xxx