My Dad

My dad died in October last year after a short illness.

I was actually in the USA at the time on work when he was taken to hospital after coming down with pneumonia. It was a strange few days as I waited to see if he would weaken or start to recover on antibiotics. Later in the week I was informed that there was nothing they could do and that he had days to live. This triggered a frantic effort to get a flight back to the UK before the end. I finally managed to move it marginally forward and rushed to the airport.

I was informed that he had passed away as we taxied to take off from Dullas airport in DC.

I was grateful to be told but it was a horrific time and place. 30,000 feet up all alone dealing with the death of a parent. Sadness, guilt and loneliness all wrapped into one grief filled moment. Tears, tantrums and nowhere to go. The air stewardess who came around took one look at my face and offered me a drink and left me alone for the rest of the flight. There was nothing anyone could do or say.

My brother and sister were at his bedside at the end. They had to watch as the machines were turned off. I think perhaps I got the better deal. Perhaps.

I was not close with my dad, he and my mother had divorced when I was maybe 4 years old. I am the youngest of 3 with about 3 - 4 years between each of us. My memories in the limited time I did see him over my childhood until 11 years old are a series of fragmented images and feelings of things that happened or we did. Memories aren’t really like in the movies either way. 

He had returned to London after the breakup and we used to go up and see him. A trip up on the National Express became the norm on at least one holiday a year. We would be loaded onto the bus in Torquay with our home address and telephone number safely pinned inside our jackets in case we go lost and then picked up from Victoria in London by dad. He would take us back trailing our bags to the flat he shared with his mother - Nanna Salt - between Hornsey and Holloway road in north London. It was a small 2 bedroom maisonette on the ground floor of a much bigger block of flats with a small balcony garden at the rear. 

It is strange the things that are so prominent in your memories about places. Little details that are blown out of proportion to their importance but that your mind latches onto. The cheap foam carpet in the hall upstairs which reminded me of velvet - and I hate the touch of velvet. The larder that was in the corner of the kitchen which was always overflowing with tea, coffee and sugar. I remember being baffled by this but it made sense with age and learning about WW2 in London. The echo that the downstairs toilet next to the front door would emit when you opened or shut the door and the loud flush created by the head height toilet cistern with a chain flush cord. 

Upstairs my dad’s bedroom was the big one at the rear which overlooked the small garden. One large double bed with shelves lining the side of the wall. He was a man who was passionate about Tom Clancy and I think Robert Ludlem - but definitely Clancy. Shelf upon shelf groaning under the weight of always hardback books. At the front of the shelves were the normal odds and ends which you pick up in life. There was a random matchbox car which I was drawn to like a moth to a flame. 

In the left hand corner nearest the bed was his record player, video player, satellite system and with a TV on the bottom shelves towards the centre of the room. Thinking about it now it must have been an old crystal TV and so massive and probably filling half the room but I don’t remember it being that big. The old blue / green LCD displays which would be covered up at night using an old black wallet of somesort. An especially important task when my dad had one of his regular migraines which had started after being mugged on the tube. 

At night we would be spread out across the flat to available spaces. Being the smallest I normally shared the double with my dad. This in theory should have meant being the most comfortable but being so small and my dad being quite portly normally meant I would slide down the bed against him like a moon being drawn down the gravity well of a large planet. It always started the same with me holding onto the edge of the bed in a vain effort to stay in place but sleep and time would always bring me to the same position.

Our jaunts around London took in many of the main sights. Popping to the various markets or the museums etc. Sometimes by bus and sometimes by tube. This was before the invention of the Oyster system and when buses took actual change. Tube journey’s would start and end with a bored TFL man glancing at a dog eyed ticket as you passed through on the way in or out of a station. I don’t know why they bothered; they couldn’t have actually read any of them. 

My dad was a man who hated the noise and dirt of London and was happy to get out of the city. Yet he was a true Cockney being born and brought up in the heart of the city with the memories to match - from picking up chocolate from a freshly bombed factory in WW2, getting lost in the great smogs with his brother Harry and even watching the Jazz greats in Ronnie Scott's in Soho. He even used to attend bare knuckle boxing matches at the Elephant & Castle where they genuinely used to use sawdust to soak up the spit and blood. The memories were there when he wanted to share them. 

He was also a man who knew facts on London. I think perhaps that is where my love of a good ‘fact toid’ comes from. He could tell you the oldest pubs, where the rivers were buried, nuclear bunkers and even where sayings came from. He was a product of London whatever his feelings towards the city were. A one man tour guide when he was in the mood. In many ways it was these early trips and conversations that helped me fall in love with the city and even though I don’t live there now it is still my city. 

He was a fun but awkward man to know, he was not comfortable with feelings or intimacy. I suppose in many ways he was a product of his time. Men weren’t supposed to share such things, they were supposed to be manly, tough and unforgiving. This made intimacy difficult with what limited time each year we had together. I never really felt that he knew how to share with us even though we were just children. He wanted to but just couldn't - this made the gap between us wide and largely unbridgeable - perhaps my brother and sister feel differently.  

Personality wise I take much more after my mother though I have touches of my dad’s anger there - the ability to burn white hot with it swiftly fading. This meant I don’t think we ever fully understood each other. In later years it made meeting a pseudo formality with neither really getting more than skin deep. A brief interaction like ships passing in the night. This compares to my brother who is very similar to him and I think ‘got’ him in a way I never could - they seemed to bond at a deeper more emotional level. Like they recognised themselves in each other. I sometimes felt a pang of jealousy but was happy that they had it.

The funeral was a strange affair. His long term wife's family was in attendance which was nice as in many ways they knew him far better than us. For me though it was just a room full of strangers which just summed up how distant we were. I really didn’t know much about him or his life and in the end the funeral made it obvious. It heightened the sense of sadness. The one brief moment of connection came when we carried the coffin in for the service. My dad by the end had got fat and I desperately wanted to comment on him being a fat cunt. I kept my silence but I think he would have laughed at that. A brief service and that was that and then the tears that came from knowing there are no do-overs in life. 

It’s now been going on 10 months since his passing - life goes on - as the saying goes which is true. When I do think about him it is less for the man. It is the melancholic grief for what could have been and what will never be now. The missed opportunity to know more about where I came from and who I am. The realisation that I will never really know him and so I will never really know myself in some way. One of the threads that leads from me into the past linking me to the chain of people who brought me here is now snapped. I will never know and as I think to have a family neither will my children. That brings a tear to my eye when I think about it now. Perhaps this is how everyone feels - perhaps not. 

I grieve in spits and spats - this piece was driven by thoughts that have chattered through my head since his passing. Things come to me at weird times - as I run, drive or simply listen to a piece of music. My mind suddenly presents its latest findings on how I feel to my slightly surprised consciousness which is eager to understand but fearful of the emotions. This piece was written after being driven out of bed at 4:30am by a dream about him and the past. It wasn’t unpleasant, just uncomfortable pushing me to wake up fully so not to return to it. Instead I have sat tapping away this morass of thoughts as a form of therapy for 2 hours. 

I loved my dad in my own way though it was distant love. I grieve that I never had a normal relationship with him but he was a good person. I hope that he enjoyed his life and I am grateful that at the end he passed away with his extended family around him. I wish I could have been there with him as well to say goodbye and that I loved him. Sometimes that is all you can say.