On Friday Wishing a happy birthday to dear Dad
THE Tour de France is on the TV again and a tear drops onto the sofa. Don McLean’s American Pie – the long version – comes on the radio. I’m sobbing uncontrollably.
Donald Trump is proudly removing his mask for the cameras. I pick up the phone to the person I know would be simultaneously laughing and spitting with rage. He’s not there.
My darling dad died six months ago. Only now have I found the strength to write about it, on the day that would have been his 79th birthday.
He was a proud man. So proud that he barely told a soul how much he was suffering.
But he had been unwell for years, and in those final weeks of his life, as the country went into lockdown, my dad was in his own lockdown, with my wonderful mum doing everything she could to keep him comfortable.
My dad was a phenomenal man. I know, most people lucky enough to have a great dad would say that. But mine really was.
He was incredibly smart and had a head full of facts that put most people to shame.
He could name every tor on Dartmoor, and had walked most of them. He could rattle off every Tour de France winner and tell you how he had climbed up every one of those great mountain summits – at least in his car, anyway. He could tell you about every Great Rail Journey in Europe and how he had been on most of them. And he could proudly recite every country and its capital city in South America, though in this case he’d never been to any of them!
He was a man of many passions, each of them demanding a mountain of memorabilia in the home we grew up in on the edge of Dartmoor.
The Pompey FC football fanzines; the Wisden cricket annuals; the golf ball markers from every club he’d ever played at; the Dartmoor magazines; the scrapbook documenting every holiday he’d ever been on; cuttings from the Western Morning News of his many published letters and dispatches – every one a reminder of the things he loved.
He had an incredibly sharp wit and an extended list of pet hates.
A passionate and proud Europhile, Brexit was understandably at the top of that list, with Boris Johnson not far behind. He got so angry about road closures and transport delays, incompetence and unfairness. And there remains an email inbox full of replies to the many missives he dispatched to various chief executives if their staff or service hadn’t met his high expectations.
Though he had high standards, he was an incredibly generous man, both with his time and money. He would always be helping someone or some organisation with their business rates, planning applications, complaints or processes, capturing and understanding the kind of detail that most of us would have struggled to retain.
Now that he’s gone, every single one of his passions and furies serves as a link to the past, and a window into the soul of my dad. Rather than being painful reminders of our loss, they are instead treasured memories of a man who deserves not to be forgotten.
I guess that’s how grief goes. Those first few weeks were filled with desperate wailing sadness, with anger that someone I loved and admired so much had gone.
Then came the bleakness. There were no more floods of tears or howling grief, just quiet sorrow and introspection.
Then there was the ‘busyness’ – that period of just getting on with things, of moving forward as if on autopilot, and subconsciously attempting to fill the void left by his passing.
And now, I guess, I’m in that long, slow period of healing or recovery, of ‘getting over it’.
But in many ways I don’t want to just ‘get over it’. I want to remember all of those strengths and weaknesses, quirks and foibles, and the limitless characteristics that encompassed and embodied my dad.
It is right that he should leave an imprint on my life and one that’s never forgotten. Every Boris blunder, every Yellow Jersey...
Happy Birthday Dad.
And now, I guess, I’m in that long, slow period of healing or recovery, of ‘getting over it’