I got a letter from my dad today, which would not have arrived as such a great surprise had my father not died in 2004… and this letter had been written at least five years before that.

In the two pages of emotive prose, my father apologises, says that he loves me, and basically asks for forgiveness in a way that he would never have been able to do in person. He also left his address and phone number should I ever wish to get back in touch and rebuild a few of the bridges he had spent years burning.

At the end of the letter, in capitals, are the words EDDIE LIVES! It’s a phrase that means nothing unless you’ve seen Eddie & the Cruisers II… something which carries a crazy ironic weight, because that movie was about a famous singer presumed dead only to be discovered alive twenty years later.

Of course, I didn’t get the chance to reconnect because the letter was kept a secret from me for two decades. Maybe I wouldn’t have contacted him at all; or perhaps I would have done so just to tell him to fuck off. The truth is I don’t know how I would have reacted twenty years ago, but the point is, it should have been my decision to make, and not just another skeleton in an already bone-riddled closet.