Six years ago today, I lost my dad. No, he didn’t fall down the back of the sofa – I’m not that careless. I still find it next to impossible to say that he’s dead. It’s too final, too difficult to persuade myself after I’ve said it that he’s just lost his memory after going out to buy biscuits and will be back fairly soon. Ever saying that he died is easier – a simple change of tense takes it from the present harsh and continuing reality to the past event: “He died once. Ooh, we had a terrible time, but he’s fine nowâ€.
Most of the time it’s something that I don’t think about in any conscious way. To do so would be like sticking your tongue against a painful tooth, or picking off an unripe scab. When I’m reminded of him, I tend to shove the grief back down where it came from – I can picture it, green and toothy, pressed against a window of glass too thick to break. I know it’s there, but it can’t get me.
This does mean, though, that when I want to try and remember him, I can’t, because I’m too scared of how I’ll feel. I’m worried that I will forget what he looked like, or sounded like, or what his beard felt like against my neck when he’d give me a big bear hug. I might even find that I forget how much he liked to play devils advocate, and argue the toss about everything, especially after a few glasses of red wine.
Maybe I will forget his huge hands, and the cracks and pits from gardening and working, perpetually filled with grime, despite all attempts to clean them. Or the smell of meths – his one and only, cast-iron cure for athlete’s foot – that used to hit you like a train when you went into the bathroom; his crazy Albert Einstein hair; his loathing of tomatoes. His big laughter and sense of humour, his paranoia and depression, his need to be needed, his fear of getting old.
His terrible jumpers, that he kept for years and years, eventually having to stick leather patches on the fraying elbows.
The way he tolerated only one of our five cats, but he loved it completely. It used to follow him around the garden, and seek him out wherever he sat down.
I try to forget the day that I went to see him in the chapel. He looked so tired and pale and cold, and his legs, under the cover of baby blue satin and lace were so flat where they’d been crushed. He’d have fucking hated the satin. A bit of tweed would have been nicer. A plain cotton check. Something other.
Just sometimes, it’ll creep up on me, and I’ll realise that he’s not going to come back. I’ll find myself taken right back to the day he died, and that aching chasm of loss that I thought I’d never be able to close. Knowing that I will never see him again, except when he appears in my dreams*, is harder to understand than anything else.
He’ll miss out on his garden growing on without him, and he’ll miss out on all the music that he loved. He’ll never see his grandchildren. He’ll never give me away, should I ever venture down the aisle. He’ll never know what his children have done, and what they have achieved, and I know how proud he would be of my sister’s burgeoning skydiving career, and my brother’s first child. All the things that are occasions for celebration are edged with the sadness of his absence.
You’d think after six years that I would be used to it, but here we are, and still counting.
*We inevitably have conversations that go something like “Where have you been? I thought you’d died.†“No, I’ve just been fishing/in space/hiding etc. etc.â€
Update: I wasn’t sure whether to post this, but I know my mum won’t mind and if my Dad does he’d better bloody well come and tell me so himself.
