My father answered a question before I'd asked it.
He said if we knew the meaning of life, we might not want to live,
I can't remember how the rest of the conversation went,
but half a century or so later,
the seed he sowed has only just begun to germinate.
*
I was a troubled child,
and a rebellious teenager.
My father handled me gently,
Mother too, but, women understanding women in a different way,
She would sometimes feel the need,
(feeling authorised and qualified)
to comment more directly.
So he was a gentle man, in the simplest sense,
Someone who was circumspect with his words
and actions,
Except on the odd occasion,
Like when he thumped a driver on the nose,
Because he'd pulled out infront of us at a junction,
And caused me to fall off the back of our motorbike.
A glimpse of the passion and love he held so carefully
inside.
*
Today I'm wondering about my father's suffering.
He was our rock,
and I don't know what that took.
His own father died when Dad was 18 months old,
According to my mother.
His own mother did not cope well,
According to my father.
Tall order to expect us all to be rocks I suppose.
My parents were born within a week of each other,
In the cold, harsh winter of 1928,
10 miles apart until the war brought them together,
my mother's mother, soon to be widowed also,
Sent to the seaside, with her children,
from blitzed out Liverpool as evacuees.
Looking at these photo's of my grandmothers,
I think about their suffering,
Yet here are two moments of, if not joy, then perhaps happiness, for them.
If my father had suffered with depression in his youth - and there was some talk of him drinking to excess at times and having to tie an alarm clock over the back of his bed so he wouldn't be late for work - he showed us no signs that he still suffered it in his later life as a family man.
The only days he ever took off work that I remember were due to bouts of bronchitis, which eventually led him to giving up smoking, an achievement he celebrated by using the money he saved to buy equipment for the hobbies he loved; woodworking and photography.
He, being a big man, tall and heavy set due to Mother's cooking and baking skills, would also periodically suffer with a bad back, but this never, in my recollection, stopped him working, there being an excellent physiotherapist and gym at his workplace. He would tell of the relief he gained from deep massage followed by hanging from wall bars in the gym at Fords and this, together with regular walks with our dog, must have kept him mobile I suppose.
Oh he surely must have taken some time off on the occasion he broke his arm in a collision with a car whilst riding his motorbike to work and perhaps more when he chopped the top of his finger off on the circular saw he'd set up in the garage. Stoic through and through, I remember him standing at the back gate, reluctant to come in, due to the copious amounts of blood I think, asking if I'd get him a clean tea towel to put over the top of it, then, if I wouldn't mind looking for the missing piece amongst the sawdust. I failed I'm afraid to say. I'm not sure why, I suppose, aged 10, I wasn't quite sure what it would look like and there was an inordinate amount of sawdust to sift through as I remember.
I wonder now if I disappointed him that time.
He did not, I do remember, take time off when Mum took to her bed with what turned out to be undiagnosed appendicitis and as a result ruptured appendix. That summer, neighbours took me under their wings and let me come on days out to the River Dee and a weekend in a caravan by the seaside because she was so poorly. From her bed, sometimes Mum would ask me to put two chops under the grill for Dad's lunch for when he came home from work on earlies, she and he must have been at a complete loss as to what to do until the doctor decided she needed to go into hospital, her pain was so great and my Nana and uncle subsequently carted me off for a holiday in the Isle of Man. I have no idea where on earth my brother was during this time, but that was fairly normal during my childhood.
*
People talk of empty nest syndrome and I have enough observational data to propose the thesis that this complaint can trigger all kinds of responses, a main one being roaming.
My brother left home to get married at 18. I wended a more circumlocutory route into adulthood.
At 18, engaged to be married, I began a course in occupational therapy at a college a bus, train and long walk away from home. Most days, when he wasn't on nights or some other awkward shift, my father would give me a lift to the station.
I know my parents were proud and pleased that I'd got into the OT college. No mean feat, it was competitive and the study and actual job was expected to be hard, worthwhile work, though not dirty. Not like being a nurse. More ladylike in their eyes perhaps ?
I think this aspect was very important to all interested members of my family.
The slow climb out of the drudgery of the working class takes generations, if it ever really happens at all.
I know that my apparently sudden decision to break off the engagement to a very eligible young quantity surveyor and quit OT college to embark on a career in art therapy filled my whole family with dismay. My father, apparently fearful of me breaking completely free - and with good reason - revealed his stern side and told me I struggled too much with art to go to college and specialise in that. He was not wrong, but I found work as a bar maid and doggedly worked at my portfolio and he softened sufficiently to drive me to beauty spots to make pastel sketches, then softened further because he'd bought me the book on how to do this and was pleasantly surprised at my efforts and not grudging in his praise.
But I knew he was still worried for me, not wanting me to break free, thinking I was not worldy wise yet.
He kept his fears and worries from me and I kept the worldly wisdom I had already gained from everyone.
After securing a place on an art foundation course, there followed four long years of my parents resisting my desire for independence. but I'm afraid that although I did keep in touch and went home fairly regularly, the permanent break had already been made.
This painful separation was necessary for me and perhaps that underlying fact was the hardest thing for my parents to bear and It was also perhaps one more straw amongst a heap of others that broke my family a little, my parents a little more, maybe my father the most.
Over the years I was at college, they moved house twice. The explanation was that my father was trying hard to find somewhere to eventually settle in retirement and he did well because both places they moved to were really very nice. It must have taken alot of hard work and sorting out for them to do that and I didn't really help very much, only being on the periphery of things and usually returning at the wrong moments after the real graft had been done.
It wasn't long after their second move that my mother was found collapsed on the pavement just before Christmas, having had a heart attack. I wasn't around to see the immediate effects on my parents, I only saw the tremendous performance they put on for me and my new boyfriend (now husband) on Christmas Day, Mum having signed herself out of hospital especially for the occasion. The first time I'd ever witnessed my Dad cooking Christmas dinner.
I have a terrible memory for dates and many other things, but I won't ever be able to forget the telephone call from Dad telling me he thought my Mum might be dead on Boxing Day of that year. I hung on the end of the phone hysterically telling him to call the ambulance, which, of course, he'd already done. I could hear the note of finality in his voice and felt, what I now feel to be, desperation. A flood of desperation that surely something could be done. This could not be true. What I heard in Dad's voice was the bleakness of acceptance.
Her funeral, held some 50 miles away from their new home at the place they grew up together, has been erased from my memory. I can't even remember how I got there nor can I remember my poor father on that day either.
In the days and weeks that followed, Dad and I operated like automated mannequins in some bizarre film, the director of which. having a very dark sense of humour, decided we would no longer be able to remember how to do basic things, so that even making a simple pot of tea was not without it's minor disasters.
Dad decided firmly that we should do something to cheer ourselves up, so we decided to have a go at using a glass engraving tool that he'd bought recently.
I ended up with a shard of glass in my eye and had to go to A&E.
Having my eye examined in such close detail under excruciatingly bright lights
I felt like I was being tortured
The drive home was sombre
I felt like I'd put my parents through hell
*
We decided, I can't remember whose idea it was originally, most probably Dad's again, to walk up Moel Famau.
It's just a couple of years since I looked up the English translation of its name; Mother Mountain or, more directly, the bare hill of Mother. We'd climbed it together as a family several times over the years and it wasn't too far from this last home my Mother lived in, so it was a good choice.
Walking up Mother's bare hill together, I know it would be a cliché to say that we gained a fresh kind of perspective, maybe it would be better to say we'd revisited a strong enough memory to understand how far we'd come and how far we had still to go. The visibility is amazing up there. Not an end to our suffering, grief is something, I've found, that merely changes over time and once it visits, leaves traces and vestiges that can cut through peace unexpectedly, but for the time being, we found some respite from the rawness. Mother Nature's beauty reminded us, Mum had always said she didn't want us to be sad.
*
Dad lived on and made a kind of new life for himself over the next 12 years, during which he saw the birth of his grandson and granddaughter, happy events which naturally brought the sting of Mum's absence back along with the euphoria. Always a calming presence, however, I remember vividly the natural bond he had with his grandchildren and the gentle touch he always had with them both, declaring once when our daughter, a few months old, was crying, that she was not a mardy baby and, unperturbed by her cry, was content to hush and push her back and forth in the pram until she was soothed by the movement and his voice, to sleep.
Full of ideas and plans, he built a workshop in his back garden, installed a left handed lathe - something I remember him hankering over after years of having to work right handed at everything - and other expensive machinery, then proceeded to work extremely hard to produce wooden pieces suitable for sale at craft fayres, hoping to be able to supplement his insufficient pension.
The long line of boxes filled to capacity with the wonderful things he'd made greeted us when we went in to his house for the first time after his death. These, together with the stack of photo albums displaying the decorative fences, window boxes, wine racks and children's toys he'd made to order, along with the hanging baskets and tubs full of the beautiful flowers, fruit and veg he'd raised in his greenhouse were overwhelming - his achievements were so many and astounding, a moving testimony to how very very hard he had worked; it broke me in pieces to think that he had quite possibly worked himself into an early grave.
*
I have many other hints at how my father suffered, but a couple of abiding ones manage to make me smile; although he, a qualified coach builder who had served his time with Hawker Siddeley, had the good fortune to be taken on by Fords to set up the press shop in the new factory being opened in Speke in the early sixties. His mode of transport to and from wouldn't have gone unnoticed I imagine. In the early days, a pushbike was probably common for those who lived close enough and then later a moped was undoubtably an acceptable step up. By the time he had a small Honda motorbike, I suppose it was expected that the next vehicle would be a car, but instead, we were treated to a motorbike and sidecar, which our small lab cross absolutely loved and looked hilarious in the front seat of the side car.
We had enormous fun travelling around and even got as far as Pwllheli for a family holiday, made possible by travelling in convoy with my uncle who had a very impressive Zephyr - which I now realise may well have irked Dad a bit, especially when he would get off the bike at the end of a journey and find it very difficult to walk, he was so stiff.
But he had a great sense of humour and would often make fun of himself. Perhaps he felt very fortunate despite not having a car. I certainly remember us all enjoying our day trips and holidays together as an extended family.
When the motorbike and side car was traded in for a Robin Reliant van, Dad seemed positively triumphant, despite the fact that his head was wedged to the roof of it when he managed to manoeuvre his large frame into the tiny space. I enjoyed riding in the passenger seat and Dad beeping at the many other Reliant vans and cars that were on the road in those days. It felt like being part of a club, but I know now that Dad had his sights on a proper car but just couldn't pass his test. I'm not sure how many people he let in on the secret each time he took it, certainly not me and even when he eventually rolled up with a confusingly luxurious Wolseley, it did not cross my mind that it was strange for him to not have bought a Ford and even stranger to have leapt up over the ranks to this tank of a vehicle.
Sometimes I rack my brains and try to remember, but the only conclusion I can draw is that he must have won on the horses at the same time as passing his test.
Eventually, the story came out that having attempted the driving test several times, on the last time the examiner made him pull over while he gave him a pep talk about how it was obvious that he was able to drive, there was no need for him to be so nervous because he was going to pass him so would he just calm down and take them both back to the test centre.
When I think about him turning up and parking in Fords' car park, there must have been a point at which it looked odd that he didn't have a proper car, though I'm not sure if comments would have been made because in those days, most people were not well off and Dad had a family and a mortgage to pay for, so to run a car as well would most probably have been a tall order for anyone on an average wage at Fords.
Surviving on a just adequate wage was not in my Dad's remit though. In the same way he had managed to get us out of Speke to the other side of the Mersey to more desirable Cheshire, he had set his sights on being able to afford books, records, trips out, holidays, nice food etc so he not only opted for the better pay of unpopular shift work, but set about making things to sell at work and even took on a job distributing competition newsletters for the charity that was in those days called The Spastics Society, which now goes by the better name of Scope.
In between all these extra activities, he managed to fit in creating a beautiful garden front and back, scavenging for wood in the places we took our dog for a walk to bring home and dry out in the garage where he'd installed rafters especially for this and which he would either chop into kindling for the fire, or make into various items he found and fancied in his regular copy of The Practical Woodworker magazine.
He fitted in all of these extra activities with such apparent ease, I don't know if he felt exhausted or not. He never seemed to turn down the opportunity to go on early morning fishing expeditions with our next door neighbour. Maybe at this point in his life he felt extremely optimistic and drew energy from it. Money, or rather, debt, only became the source of his suffering decades later and it is a source of my own suffering because my husband and I had hatched a cunning plan for us all to live together which would have solved his problems just before he died.
And it is the circumstances of his death which cause me to often dwell on and worry about the final moments, hours or perhaps even days of his life and the suffering he must have experienced over that time.
Sometimes a decision which causes deep pain can also be one that might be correct, yet the pain prevents us from knowing.
This is almost the case with regard to my own movements and behaviour just prior to my father's death.
To explain; It was Easter week. Our children were young; 22 months and 8 years old. We'd decided to visit their grandparents on Easter Sunday, paternal ones first, then on the way home, my Dad. But as we set off for my Dad's, because our youngest was not a great traveller and we were all a bit worn out by the first visit, I made the decision to drive on by past my Dad's and call him when we arrived home to rearrange. I knew he would be disappointed, but expected he would understand that we would all have a nicer time if we arranged to see just him on another day soon.
Initially, I wasn't too worried about him not answering the phone, he was quite often busy in his workshop and didn't hear it.
I can't remember when I took the call. I can remember thinking it was him at last, but it wasn't, it was someone telling me that he'd been found collapsed apparently whilst watching telly and had lain there for a couple of days.
Sometimes I comfort myself that those were busy times for us, fractious even, we were balancing such alot of different needs. And it was in the days before mobile phones. We were all used to not speaking for days, weeks even. But these excuses never work for more than the time it takes to think them and the guilt I feel for not going to see him will haunt me and upset me until the day I myself die.
Maybe it's right that we wouldn't have been able to help. Maybe it's true that it could have been catastrophically traumatic for our children to have been taken there that day, that I wouldn't have been able to shield them from what had happened. Maybe I myself and my husband would have been catastrophically damaged by what we would have been confronted with. Lord knows the days and weeks and even years that followed turned out hard enough.
His funeral at the local church was rather beautiful and well attended, Dad had always been quietly popular, well respected and made good friends wherever he went. It was such a wonderful surprise that some of his old workmates from Fords attended and one said to me that if he'd had more notice the church would have been overflowing. I felt I'd let him down yet again for not organising things in the way I should, but in my defence I was utterly, utterly devastated.
*
And so, when I re-consider my Dad's musing about what on earth life is about and how we might not want to know the answer, I conclude that for him, life was about struggle and suffering and trying to find enjoyment and create beauty and loving connections despite and because of it all. And I want to say to him; Dad you did it. You fulfilled your destiny. You overcame adversity, played the tricky hand you'd been dealt with intelligence, diligence, patience and good grace. It was worth it because some of your loving kindness and courage rubbed off on everyone who came into contact with you and we were all inspired and enriched by your presence. Rest well, in peace, for you definitely deserve to.
***
🍂
