Smudger Snippets
Created | Updated Nov 12, 2003
I suppose it's because I have so much time on my hands these days, that all these memories come flooding back to me.
My Dad
My Dad had died - that was all I could remember from the frantic phone call my Mom had just made to me. I just handed the phone to my wife and walked through to the living room and lit up a cigarette. I had things to do, things to sort out. I had to phone my boss at work and tell him that I would need the three days bereavement leave that the company allowed us. I had to get up there to where he was, some one hundred or so miles away. I was so wrapped up in everything it meant I had to do, I had totally forgot the reason for all this, my Dad had died.
It was just the shock of it all really. Last time I saw him was just four days earlier as he stood at the bottom of the stairs leading up to the car park. He looked alright, wearing his usual black coat and jumper, with his dog collar. Yes he was a priest in the Episcopal Church, a non-stipend priest1. This fact had come as a shock to me at the time, as I had been working away a lot and had not seen my parents for some time. I was always too busy working, or sorting out my own life, to spare the time to go and visit them.
I remember that, when we were young, my sister and I always had to work. It was like a family trait - everyone had to work. I suppose looking back on it now that was the one thing my father had taught me; the art of work. I mean, he never took me fishing or to the football or things like that in general, as he was always working. We were never what you could call close, my Dad and I, it was just like a bond, without words.
Oh! Yes we argued! I always argued about why we had to work all the time and then, as I got older, we argued about politics and religion and about my drinking! My Dad was no longer a drinker although he had been in his younger days when he was in the RAF. He only became involved with the Church late in his life, as he told us that was when he got his calling. Looking back on it now, it must have taken some real courage to do what he did. I mean who would walk away from a thriving business and a large comfortable house to go and live away up North in a freezing cottage with just one coal fire? My Dad did!
We never really got on, as people would say. When he was organizing one of his coffee mornings for the Conservative Party I refused to help, on the grounds that I was a strong Scottish Nationalist party member. We also argued about religion and I kept bringing up the past about how we were forced to go to Church when we were young. In fact I never really gave him the support I should have. Yes he made us work, but that was only for our own benefit, I can see that now. All those jobs he insisted I help him with, while all my mates were out playing football or chasing girls; we were working renovating the building that was later to be his next enterprise. Yet all that time he was teaching me all these skills that made me a proficient handy man later in life. In fact he was teaching me all that time and I never knew.
He never hit me in his life; in fact the change in his voice was enough to make us behave. He had to put up with a lot when our mother used to have these 'bouts of nerves' as she called them. What it meant, in real life, was that my Dad was being treated badly for no reason. We could see this when we were younger, but we never did understand why. I now know why; he was a gentle, kind-hearted man, who put up with his wife's moods because he loved her dearly. He was always there to patch up all the rows I used to have with my mother, as when I got a bit older I used to stand up against her; this caused even more trouble for my Dad.
I can still recall the day I was up in my room packing my clothes as I had been thrown out by my mother for personal reasons. Anyway, my Dad came up to see me and offered me a cigarette; this surprised me, as he had never done that before. He then went to explain that he had tried his best to patch things up as normal, but it was no good. Then he swore, not in temper or any thing like that, he just said, well you have ******* done it this time. I just laughed, I can still see that look on his face, it was almost like he was admiring my stand, and for the first time in my life I felt close to him.
He never did harm anyone, he just got on with his hard working life, which, looking back on it now, was probably the reason he died of a heart attack at the tender age of fifty nine.
I only wish, now, that I had taken the time to really know my Dad when he was alive, but I was too busy working! Ironic really, yet it is the truth. If only I had just stopped working and spent more time with him, I know I would have understood him better. The word 'love' was never used in our family. A fact that was made painfully true to me when I first met my second wife, a person who was not afraid to say the word, a word that even now, after all this time, I am coming to understand. It was like I mentioned earlier, a bond of unspoken words, of actions and, of course, work. I now know that, deep down, I did love my Dad. I just could not tell him, probably for the same reasons that he could not tell me.
So I suppose what I am saying is that we should let people know what we feel when they are around us and appreciate their being there, as it is too late once they are gone.
