Student Craig McKee only realised how ill his dad was when his voice and laugh changed.
The 20-year-old, who lost his dad Hugh 57, to motor neurone disease, has raised thousands for Scotland’s MND charity and will be doing the same today – his first Father’s Day without him.
They were incredibly close and Hugh, an actuary, gave his son a love of figures and sport that shaped his life.
They went to Scotland rugby games together. On car journeys they listened to maths podcasts and Hugh was there to explain anything young Craig didn’t understand.
“There was never anything he wouldn’t know,” Craig said. “He was a wizard with numbers.
“He was incredibly supportive of me and my sister Sarah in everything we did. He came to all our sports games. Anything we put our mind to, he pushed us to do our best.”
Craig was just 18 and finishing school when Hugh was diagnosed in May 2020. He recalled: “His laugh had changed – it was a gasping breath rather than a smooth laugh.”
At the end of that summer, Craig left the family home in Coatbridge to study aeronautical engineering at Glasgow University. Coming home for Christmas after three months living in halls, he was shocked at the changes in Hugh.
He said: “Dad had lost the use of his right hand a bit, he couldn’t control that well. At that point I realised I shouldn’t have gone. I did regret that slightly.”
Craig moved home as his dad began to deteriorate more quickly. By March he was losing his speech and communicated through an app that used his own voice.
Craig’s mum Jillian became Hugh’s full-time carer. He died in December, just 18 months after his diagnosis.
Today the McKees are heading to the Western Tennis Club in the west end of Glasgow. The club, where Craig is a coach, is hosting a two-hour charity event. He said: “We picked the Sunday at the end of the junior tennis coaching block and it happened to be Father’s Day. So it was made to be that.”
The event, called McKee Against MND, is just one part of the family’s fundraising, with Sarah and a friend running 100k.
Craig added: “I’ve been running every day this year to raise money. I picked a target of 1964 miles – it’s Dad’s birth year.”
And when he comes to be a father himself, he will have a great role model to follow.
“The constant support in whatever we wanted to do was the main thing,” Craig said. “If we had decided we didn’t want to do maths he would have been fully behind that as well. It didn’t matter what it was or what sport it was, he would support us in whatever we wanted to do.”
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