To mark his 70th birthday, Michael Harding took a holiday in Spain, walking a short part of the Camino de Santiago in the early summer of 2024. But as he set off on this pilgrimage, Harding wasn’t alone. Accompanying him was his father, who passed away when Michael was just twenty-two. A man who was distant and aloof, but who had a profound effect on the writer’s life. In, I Loved Him from the Day He Died, Harding travels back in time to the Ireland of his youth, to the Holy Wells and pubs he visited in a search for a sense of connection and he begins to unpack the long ago trauma of losing a father he never really knew. As he walks in the heat of the Spanish sun, with searing honesty & beautifully wrought prose, he examines how the father shapes the son and how the boy becomes a man in the search for that which makes us whole: belonging. And, as Harding arrives back home after his trip, he discovers, finally, how to say goodbye. Told with simple vulnerability and profound insight, I Loved Him from the Day he Died is a stunning and heartfelt examination of love, forgiveness and letting go.
