Becca Jane St Clair

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On 28 October 1992, I lost my dad. I was 13. Star Trek was on my small screen and I had been watching the episodes and Captain Picard (and later, Patrick Stewart himself) became a sort of stand-in dad to me. And then, on 28 October 2026, we lost Patrick.

I finally got the chance to see Sir Patrick speak in March 2018 with my husband. He was speaking at the Huddersfield Literature Festival, and after speaking with the promotors, we secured seats in the front. I already blogged about it, so I won’t rehash it here.

A few months later, I had the opportunity to attend a gala event where Patrick was the patron for the charity. That was an amazing day because I also got to speak with him and he shook my hand multiple times. This was also the trip I helped him out at the railway station and honestly, he was just so down to earth and a normal man anxious about his train!

I also had the opportunity to attend DST the year Patrick was there to announce Picard. As part of my Daily Dose of Patrick Twitter account, the organizers allowed me to be Press during his talk. Sadly, he had to leave as he had another appearance in Paris the following day, so no one got the chance to speak with him, but it was still an amazing experience.

And then the last time I saw Patrick in person was at the London premiere for Star Trek Picard.

But this isn’t a post to just rehash when I saw/met Patrick, although that is fun to do. I struggled with writing anything to be honest. I’m still a little broken. Like I said, the 28th has always been a rough day for me, with me not really knowing how I was going to feel until the day. This year, everything hit me the day before for some reason, carried on into the 28th, and by the 29th, I honestly wasn’t much better!

I had been on a call with my friend Dan as we’re starting to organize an SFI chapter of our own (more on that later!) and after we hung up I had gone into the kitchen to make dinner when my phone told me Dan had sent me a voice note. We don’t often exchange voice notes, so I grabbed my phone to listen and his message was letting me know that I needed to brace myself before I looked at social media. For some reason, my heart sunk and I nearly predicted it was going to be about Patrick.

I loaded facebook and the first post I see is from another friend of mine, so I opened X to confirm, and sure enough, it was there. At the same time my sister sent me a text asking if I was at my phone because she wanted to call me as there was something I needed to know that she didn’t want me to see online. I told her I had already seen it and I was already sobbing as I finished up dinner.

More of my friends checked on me as they all knew how much Patrick meant to me, and it meant a lot to see all the texts and comments. I love all of you and thank you for checking on me. The trek community online – on X, threads, BlueSky, and Facebook have all been amazing, too. We’ve all come together in our grief to mourn a man who many of us in our 40s and 50s looked to as a father figure. I said on threads that it honestly felt like we had lost our patriarch.

I will be OK. It just might take me some time to really wrap my head around Patrick not being here. My heart goes out to his wife Sunny, and his kids Dan and Sophie and his grandkids. But they also deserve time to grieve in their own way and we should all give them their space. This goes for his TNG and X-Man cast and crews, too. If someone hasn’t said anything, maybe they just haven’t found the words yet. I’m not even sure if I did.

Time to rewatch TNG. I started with Farpoint and skipped Code of Honour. For reasons, I tend to skip most of S2, but I’ll watch a half dozen of those including Measure of a Man.

Live long and prosper.

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