'The day my dad died, I set off to row 3,000 miles across the Atlantic'

Clare was 1,600 miles away from home when her dad passed away (Picture: Supplied) My dad Mick was my best friend. I spent much of my 47 years on this earth in sync with him. We shared a love of poetry, cheese, Simon and Garfunkel, chess and baking bread. He taught me to ride a bike, tie my shoes, blow on a blade of grass and find the fun in almost any situation. He believed in me relentlessly when I often struggled to believe in myself. So, when Dad took his last breath on December 13 last year, part of my heart stopped beating with his. What made things all the more worse was that when it happened I was 1,600 miles away, getting ready to row 3,000 miles across the Atlantic from the Canary Islands in Spain to Antigua in the Caribbean. It was just days earlier I had arrived in La Gomera, for a rowing race called The World’s Toughest Row. That morning I’d finished a mandatory inspection and was on my way to get lunch, when Dad called. While I can’t recall a word of the conversation we had, it ended with him saying “I love you,” and me saying “I love you too.” If I’d known they would be our last words, I’d never have hung up. ‘My dad Mick was my best friend,’ says Clare (Picture: Supplied) Dad had spent years in ill health. Diagnosed with epilepsy in 1978 a few months before I was born, he later developed COPD before the cruel diagnosis of Alzheimer’s and Dementia in 2020, and had survived several strokes in his final years.  Even so, he was a Trojan of a man with a gentle, kind heart that refused to yield in the face of such difficulties. He spent every day in pain but never showed or spoke of it. Just hours after our call, Dad was taken to hospital after falling ill at the day centre he went to. He went downhill fast, being diagnosed with both sepsis and E.Coli and was sedated, such was his pain and discomfort. I spent the next four days in a daze dreading taking to the ocean – something I’d been longing and training for it for over 15 months. I called my three children, Eddie, 21, Sammy, 17 and Annie, 14, on Facetime individually telling them all their beloved grandad was poorly and in hospital and likely wouldn’t make it.  I couldn’t talk to Dad but my brother, Michael, would hold the phone to his ear while I replayed childhood memories and bike rides to him. I’d sit for hours in the local Spanish church praying for him to come around. ‘Dad was a Trojan of a man with a gentle, kind heart that refused to yield in the face of such difficulties'(Picture: Supplied) But then I received the phone call from my mum, Irene, to say my dad had passed away. It felt like the bottom had fallen out of my world. I didn’t crumble, but it felt like the world I knew had suddenly gone and a new one was beginning. I’d have definitely pulled the plug if I’d been doing a solo race, but I was rowing in a female trio with two other women, Rosie and Mel. If I’d pulled out, they wouldn’t have been allowed to continue without me.  Instead, I spent 3,000 miles and 42 days crying a sea of tears for my beloved dad. On the morning of the 14 December, I squared my shoulders, put on sunglasses to hide my tears, clipped onto my boat with my safety harness and picked up two oars. The live race start was shown on YouTube and while I barely remember rowing out of the harbour, I remember thinking Dad would want me to head out and live an adventure he could only have dreamed of. After six weeks on the ocean, we came second in the women’s class, with the race finish being shown on YouTube. You can see me drop the oars and sob the second the flares mark the finish of our transatlantic row. I’m still figuring out what I learned out on the vast sea and I’ll forever be processing the grief I rowed out the harbour with, but the one thing I’m sure of is that the Atlantic is both a beautiful and brutal place to grieve. ‘I barely remember rowing out of the harbour, but I remember thinking Dad would want me to live an adventure he could only have dreamed of’ (Picture: Supplied) ‘I’m still figuring out what I learned out on the vast sea’ (Picture: Supplied) Like Dad, my heart lives barely below the surface. He and I always shed tears at sad stories or felt goosebumps at beautiful sunrises, but rowing out into force 7 weather, I tried to compartmentalise my grief to focus on the task in hand of crossing an ocean safely.  I found strange comfort in how quickly I grew accustomed to the huge waves that engulfed us just hours out of port.  With a rowing shift schedule we’d agreed on before leaving, I had hours every day where I’d be rowing our boat on my own. Some hours in daylight, some at night and while I’d spent my childhood and adult life scared of the dark – something Dad adored – I tried to find solace in the pitch black knowing he loved it. Clare wrote her dad’s euology on the ocean (Picture: Supplied) I’d cry alone on the oars – no noise coming from my mouth so not to wake my sleeping crew mates. It was on the ocean that I wrote Dad’s eulogy – just as he’d asked me to – even though I knew I wouldn’t be able to read it at his funeral. Instead, my eldest son, Eddie, delivered it for me and knocked it out the park. His grandad would have been so proud, as Eddie told the room how my dad thrived on all our achievements and the unmistakable way he would say ‘well done, kiddo” when we told him our good news. I ended the eulogy with a stark truth: Dad had taught us so much – just not how to live without him. Every time the sky was lit up with shooting stars and meteors, it felt like messages from Dad to keep going, to push on when I felt I couldn’t.  During the race, Clare often thought of her childhood with her dad (Picture: Supplied) On too many shifts to count, I let my mind wander back to childhood memories and with nothing to do but row, eat and sleep, I could replay them all in minute detail. I savoured them – like the slowly sucked rhubarb and custard sweets dad had bought me as a child from the sweet shop along the road.  I’d let my mind weave through the routes we’d walked when I was a child. I’d recall every small detail of being taught to play chess on a sunny day around June in 1984, when all I wanted was to play in the garden but he thought it important I learned it despite being just five years old. When dad was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and Dementia in 2020 we spent hours talking about his funeral, what music he wanted, what poems and readings.  I told him I loved him every time we spoke and I managed to take him to the Outer Hebrides and the Lake District.  I left nothing unsaid and we had no unfinished business between us – I know I’m incredibly fortunate in that sense – but that carries little solace for me.  I crossed an ocean after losing him, but now I’m home, I’m not sure how I will be able to navigate the rest of my life without Dad in it.