“The last time I spoke with him, the last words we said was ‘I love you’ to each other even though we didn’t know what was going to happen.”
Wrexham club captain Ben Tozer discusses the death of his father, and his emotions are clearly fresh two months later.
Keith Tozer was in the grandstand on a Saturday evening in late April as Ben raised the National League trophy amid joyous scenes at the Racecourse Stadium.
Wrexham had recently defeated Boreham Wood to win the league and return to the Football League after a 15-year hiatus.
Tozer, the record-breaking season’s defender, had played every minute of it, and his father had made the round trip of more than 500 miles from his home in Plymouth to north Wales to watch him play.
“He would come to the games up here and would drive up with my uncle,” recalled Tozer.
“He was here the day we won the league, which was amazing for me.”
But, in the midst of the championship festivities, Ben realised that something was wrong with his father.
“He’d come to the games but he’d always get off before I got out, which I found a bit of a red flag,” Ben said.
“He wasn’t well, but I never saw him, and it was almost as if he was hiding from me, which I now understand.”
“At the end of last season, I went to a friend’s funeral, and one of the guys my dad worked with said, ‘I saw your dad, and he didn’t seem the same.'”
“My brother said it, my wife expressed concern, and my father responded, ‘It’s okay, I’m getting checked, I’ll get checked.'”
“Obviously it ended up too late because by the time he got checked he passed away a few days later.”
Keith was diagnosed with leukaemia after being taken to the hospital in July, but he died a few days later.
Those few days were described as a “whirlwind” by Ben.
“I trained on the Monday, got the train down to Plymouth and got there just before they switched everything off,” he stated.
“The gaffer [Wrexham manager Phil Parkinson] helped massively, straight away even little things like first-class ticket on the train, offered to get me a helicopter to Plymouth, things like that. “The Tuesday it was literally the only day I was going to be in Plymouth apart from his funeral. “The day after he passed away we sorted his house out, Wednesday I travelled back up and then we were away to America which was a bit strange because I felt too normal. “I felt ‘right I’ve got a job to do, I’ve got to do this, crack on’. “I didn’t even think about it, I was so busy. It was one thing after another. “I suppose if I was home, what would I do? Just
