Dear Danny,
It’s been so many years, and I’m only just allowing myself to say your name out loud again.
Daniel Dakum.
I saw a picture today. A Facebook story—of all places. A woman I barely know, smiling with her children. In the background was a banner with your name on it: Daniel Dakum Foundation. It knocked the breath out of me. I blinked like maybe I had misread it. And then I saw another image—your family, all of them on stage, gathered around a penciled portrait of you. That soft face. That gentle smile. Just like I remember. And suddenly, you were everywhere. In my chest. In my throat. In the tears I didn’t know I had buried so deep.
I don’t know what it was that stopped me from thinking of you all these years. Maybe life just kept moving, or maybe it was safer to tuck you away in the back of my memory—untouched and perfect. But I remember you, Danny. God, do I remember you.
I remember secondary school when I felt like the world had nothing soft for me. When so many voices told me I was less, made me question everything about myself—my face, my skin, my worth. And then there was you. One year ahead, but somehow always beside me. You had this rare kindness. You didn’t perform it; it just lived in you. When you told me I was beautiful, I didn’t believe you—not really—but I wanted to. And somehow, that was enough to get me through.
I remember how new email was back then. We didn’t have Instagram or WhatsApp or any of these ways to stay in constant touch. Just an inbox and a waiting heart. You’d send me notes—nothing grand, nothing dramatic. Just soft, thoughtful words. Sometimes jokes. Sometimes check-ins. They felt like tiny lifelines. I didn’t know how much I needed those messages until they stopped.
Then one day, an email came. Not from you. From someone else. I can still see the subject line in my mind: “Danny is Dead.” That’s how it was phrased—like the whole world could fit into three words. Like those three words could explain why the air left the room or why everything suddenly felt smaller and meaner and colder. I had just begun to feel like I had a friend. Like I was being seen. And then you were gone.
For years, I dreamed about you. Sometimes we were just walking and laughing. Sometimes we were older, like I imagined we’d be now. But you were always there, as if time and death had no hold on you. I’d wake up with your name on my lips and this ache in my chest I didn’t know what to do with. I never told anyone how much I missed you. How much I still do.
There’s a question that haunts me sometimes—one I’m not sure I’m brave enough to answer: Would I still have loved you this much if you were still here? Did death immortalise you? Make you more than human in my mind? I don’t know. But something in me whispers yes—I would have. Because it wasn’t just the loss that shaped my love for you. It was your presence. Your softness. The way you made me feel less alone in a world that rarely offered me gentleness.
I think of what kind of man you would’ve grown into. I imagine you with a quiet confidence, maybe still calling people beautiful when they forget they are. Maybe still writing small messages to remind someone they matter. Maybe a husband. A father. A friend who shows up. I wish I could have seen you become all those things. I wish I could have grown into my own skin with you still in the world.
Today, I let myself mourn you. Fully. For the first time in years, I opened the floodgates and let it all come. And in doing so, I found something strange and beautiful: I’m grateful. Not for the loss, but for the knowing of you. However brief. However unfairly cut short. You gave me a kind of hope I didn’t even know I needed. You showed me that even in a world full of noise and cruelty, there could be people who see you, really see you—and love what they see.
Danny, thank you. For your kindness. For your voice. For the simple, quiet ways you made a lonely girl feel like she mattered. You may never have known what you meant to me. But maybe, wherever you are now, you do.
Always missing you,
Still grateful for you,
Always yours in memory,
Christine.
P.S.
Most people call me Cathy now.🙂
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