Today is a Father’s Day like no other: the first
I have to get through without either parent. No e-mail from Mum to my brother
and me, telling us that she is thinking about us – another first, of which
there will be many and already have been since she died on April 17th.
I am a 60 year old orphan.
I can’t believe that it’s nearly three decades since Dad died: 30 years
since I last sent him a Father’s Day card and the first one endured with a
gut-wrenching sobbing and feeling of resentment towards children buying cards
and gifts for their dads. This year, as every other, those celebratory images
in shop windows do not lose their impact. The Interflora phone service from
which I once ordered flowers still reminds me every year to send something to
Dad, despite my having told them, as the first Father’s Day approached after
his death, how much their automated prompt had upset me. I remember two decades
after he passed, breaking down at a missive from the Apple Store online, suggesting
Father’s Day gifts. “Dad’s digital power tools”, the site excitedly announced
about the Mac and i-pod, “exactly what he needs to enjoy the things he loves –
movies, music, photos, and more.”
The things he loves. The things my Dad loved. They were not computers,
movies, music and photos. They were not nights spent down at the local pub with
his mates. They were not flash holidays, fast cars and other material goods
bought only to keep up with and surpass the Joneses. What my Dad loved most was
his family. My mum, my brother Nigel and me. And now, every Father’s Day, I try
to put aside the immense sadness I still feel at his not being here and
celebrate the fact that I was blessed with such a kind, thoughtful, strong and
loving man who, all these years on, continues to have such a huge, positive
impact on my life.
Donald Arthur Stephen was born in Cardiff, the eldest of five boys, and
met my mother, Valerie Mary Jones, at a dance in the city’s Sophia Gardens. Mum
wrote in her diary that Dad had “funny eyes”, but after that, the only hiccup
to their getting together was Dad’s ex, Jean, for whom Mum thought he still had
feelings. He had bought her a handbag, but they broke up before he had chance
to give it to her, so Mum insisted that he take it to her in Scotland where she
lived, just to be absolutely sure that he did not want to get back together
with her before embarking on a relationship with her. The handbag incident (I
like to imagine Jean whimpering “A handbag? A handbag?” a la Lady Bracknell)
sealed his feelings for Mum and they married in 1953, when Mum was 21 and Dad
24. I was born five years later and, when I celebrated my big birthdays – 40,
50, 60 – wished with all my heart that Dad had been there.
The last birthday party he attended would be his last. I was 30, living
in London and working as television critic on the London Evening Standard. I
still went home regularly, and even more so when Dad first went into hospital
in the January of 1987. I was used to him being ill; he had been a smoker and
had always had a weak chest. But he had always come through and we expected him
to again. The moment I knew he would definitely not was the Christmas before he
died, when a doctor at the hospital told me that he had suffered three “small”
heart attacks that week. “But no one can survive that, can they?” I asked.
“Well, no,” he said.
Until that moment, I had not thought of a life without Dad. Although I
was very busy in my new job and having problems settling in an alien city, we
were in constant touch, either through visits or on the phone. Then, as always,
Dad was a huge part of my life, and even the thought of him not being there
left a hole that left me gasping for breath. This was what people meant when
they talked of the parent becoming the child, and I felt ill equipped for my
new role. Feeding Dad his supper one night, when he was too weak to hold the
fork, was a moment of grown-upness too far.
The doctor had clearly not told Dad what he had told Nigel and me,
because one evening he said to Mum, tearfully: “I don’t want to die.” I suspect
he knew, but we all continued to live with hope in our hearts, even if it had
gradually left our heads.
But on his 60th, in March 1989, he is just out of Bristol’s
Frenchay Hospital again and home in time for the celebrations. His hands look
older, as if, in spirit, they are still in Frenchay, merely on loan until the
day comes for them to be returned permanently. Outside the abnormality of the
ward and back home, they seem more lined and appear to have taken on a yellow
tinge. The fingernails, as always, are perfectly trimmed, with not a speck of
dirt. “Hi, Gaggie Nennens,” he says, greeting me at the front door. It was his
pet name for me when I was a child and he started using it because when people
used to ask my name, the mispronounced words came out as: “Gaggie Nennens.”
The party feels like a farewell: a rehearsal for the funeral that in our
darkest hours we suspect is not too far away. When the guests have gone and he
is ready for bed, I kiss him goodnight at the top of the stairs and am shocked
to feel the smallness of his frame in his pyjamas, bones drowning in blue
cotton. When I hold him close, the softness gives way to small, sharp points
bursting out of his back. This is not the body that lifted me up to Georgie in
his budgerigar’s cage, saying “Night, night, Georgie”; nor the hands that held
my clammy forehead over the toilet bowl when I was sick. Dad is slipping away
to a place he has not yet been, and I am helpless to pull him back. The more I
try, the further he falls, all the time shrinking, shrinking, and it tears me
apart to feel my father so small in my arms. But the inner strength that has
always been him is still there; he does not seem like a man who wants to die.
I was always Gaggie Nennens to Dad, just as I would always be the little
girl who was never old enough to cross the road by herself. Well into my
twenties, when I went home and would venture out for, heaven forbid, a pint of
milk, he would warn: “Be careful crossing the road.” When we went for a drink,
after two minutes he would be wiping his eyes, as if he had never even
recovered from the fact that I learned to speak.
Dad was an intensely emotional person, whose feelings did not reveal
themselves in outbursts, but in still, quiet moments when the tears would come
at the slightest prompting. He would be the first to cry at Lassie on a Sunday
afternoon when we sat watching TV as a family; he could never talk about his
parents without crying; and when our pet poodle Emma died, he was
grief-stricken for months.
He blamed himself for not cleaning out the boiler flue that killed Emma
by carbon monoxide poisoning. He and Mum had wondered why my brother, who was
also near the flue, was sleeping almost to the point of rigor mortis, so in
fact Emma saved his life. But Dad never forgave himself and, when we had our
next dogs (two, to assuage the guilt still further), he was particularly soft
on them.
Sally the Chihuahua and Tara the poodle lived longer lives than their
predecessor (indeed, they outlived Dad) largely as a result of Dad’s
solicitations. When Dad was taken ill, they had, between them, two good eyes,
six good legs, one and a half tails, one womb and no properly functioning
bladder. Where Mum would put down one square of the Bristol Evening Post for
both dogs for their nocturnal habits and then berate them for the spillage, Dad
put down the equivalent of the New York Times. When he was in hospital, his
role as acting urologist to the dogs was probably the main thing they missed.
That, and his giving each of them a saucer of coffee in the living room last
thing at night.
If Dad’s love for the dogs was revealed in such small acts of kindness,
it was multiplied a hundredfold when it came to his children. He always treated
us equally and also could not bear for him and Mum to have anything without
sharing it with us. On the rare occasions when they had a Chinese takeaway
(very rarely; money was tight), he put a small amount on two saucers (having
been washed after the dogs’ coffee, I must presume) and brought it up to us in
bed, two little birds with open mouths anticipating a rare luxury.
Until my late teens, our social life centred on family activities. We
were all ballroom dancing competitors and used to travel with Mum and Dad to
their evening competitions, where my collection of rubber animals was always a
hit amongst the judges. It did no good when they came to awarding Mum and Dad
points, though, not least because no lime green latex praying mantis in the
world is going to compensate for the fact that your parents cannot dance in
time to the music.
They were occasions when Mum and Dad were guaranteed to argue, each
blaming the other for dancing on the wrong beat. As with all their
disagreements, they were little more than surface spats. My mother was the more
volatile of the two, and Dad a placid person who let what he saw as pointless
conflict go over his head. But I never doubted their love, and even after 37
years of marriage at the time he died, Mum said that her heart still missed a
beat (a bit like her dancing, in that respect) when she heard his voice at the
end of the phone.
You would imagine, that having such a good, strong role model, that I
would be drawn to men of similar emotional stature; but throughout my entire
adult life I was drawn almost exclusively to weak, cruel men, who undermined me
and drained my confidence. I had a wonderful childhood that equipped me with
high self-esteem, and, until the age of 16, considered myself an extremely
happy person. Becoming involved with one of my school-teachers at that time set
me on a destructive path that would colour – or rather, discolour -my life for
the next 30 years, and he could not have been more different from my Dad in
every respect: selfish, a user, emotionally inept. It just goes to show: you
can have everything going for you, have the best role models in the world, and
you can still screw up.
Dancing to the wrong beat was one of the rare skills Dad could not
master. In other things, he had a lot of knowledge about a lot of things, and
his practical skill at all things electrical and mechanical (he was a
mechanical engineer) is something I have inherited from him, albeit on a small
scale. I also inherited from him a strong work ethic that was instilled in me
from primary school age. If you are not in work on time, he used to say, it is
not your employer’s problem. But what if the bus breaks down, I used to say.
Still not your employer’s problem. The responsiblity to do what one is asked,
to the best of one’s ability and deliver it on time is something to which I
have adhered to my entire working life, and it astonishes and frustrates me
that others do not adopt the same philosophy.
His practical skills manifested themselves in all areas of our lives. It
was to him my mother turned when the Betterware man, Tupperware man, Avon lady,
or whoever else my mother had taken pity on, rang the door for payment for the
useless goods she had ordered (there was a Cancer research man, too, but he
died). Whatever they required – the Avon payment book, invoices, insurance
certificates, cash – Mum could never find to give them. Along with car-keys,
lipsticks, cheque-books and pens, these items were Dad’s responsibility in the
midst of Mum’s mounting panic over their apparent loss.
When Dad dies, the first card through the door is from the Avon Lady.
My first thought is one of surprise that Avon ladies still exist; the
second, that Mum still buys from them. Within two hours of Dad’s death, Mum
picks up the card from behind the door, opens it, smiles, frowns and cries.
“It’s from the Avon Lady,” she says, passing me the first bereavement card of
the day. I read the message: “You’ll never be able to find the book now.” Don’t
bother calling again, Avon.
Both my Mum and Dad gave my brother and me a good, fulfilled and joyous
childhood. There was not a vast amount of money, but we lived a comfortable
life in which we felt no deprivation - well, apart from my resenting the cooked
meal we had every day after school, when my friends up the road were enjoying Ritz
crackers and cheese. Our holidays were spent at Butlin’s, where we enjoyed late
nights drinking hot milk and watching the doughnut-making machine sugar our
supper. On summer weekends we went to the beach, where Dad really came into his
own packing the car (and unpacking it at the other end) the essentials Mum
deemed necessary for a day at the sea - wind-break, Lilo, Flotina, deck chairs,
table and chairs, cold-box, hamper, sun umbrella, Tupperware for sandwiches and
squash, flasks for tea and coffee, dog bowls, towels and swimming costumes,
eight gallons of Calamine lotion. By the time we left the house, dusk was
falling and our day out became 40 minutes. But as with everything, Dad bore his
lot with equanimity.
Dad’s calm nature was in stark contrast to that of Mum, Nigel and me,
whose rather wacky humour put us in tune with each other in rather more obvious
ways. Where Mum had me dressed in psychedelic dresses and wearing cowbells to
school when I was 11, Dad practically needed oxygen when I wore my first pair
of platform shoes with a bright red plastic heart on the sides. His views on
fashion were, as his values, old-fashioned by today’s standards, but I remain
grateful for them.
He taught me manners and respect; the importance of hard work and being
driven, but not to the point of negating the people closest to you. Despite his
intellect and enormous success in his work, his family came first, ambition
second. I doubt he ever thought of it as a sacrifice, but it is one that I
believe he made in order that his children might have better lives. Mum still
lives in Bristol and works as a therapist. Like my relationship with Dad, it is
a very close one, and undoubtedly Dad’s goodness and love live on in the
special relationship I have both with her and Nigel. Every year, on Father’s
Day, we call each other and remember just how lucky we were to have him.
The day of Dad’s death is as clear today as it was in 1990. I wake in
London in my flat in Belsize Park Gardens to the sound of my answer machine clicking
in the living room. When I play back the messages, the last one says: “He
passed away a few minutes ago . . . Jac? JAC? Oh, my God, it’s the
answer-machine! What do I do? What do I do? It’s her answer machine!”
The nurse, having heard my voice, passed Mum the phone, without
realising that it was a recording.
A moment of numbness quickly becomes one of hysteria. I play the message
again and again, hoping for a different conclusion.
I take the train from Paddington to Bristol and, hours later, am in my
parents’ home, looking at two bags on the kitchen unit under two separate
pieces of paper. The first says SMALL ITEMS OF VALUABLE PROPERTY and lists:
£1.25 – cash, 1 watch, glasses and case. The second, PROPERTY TO BE KEPT
SECURELY IN GENERAL ADMINISTRATION OFFICE, listing toilet requisites, 1 track
suit, 1 vest, 1 pants, 1 pair slippers, 5 hankies, 1 book, biscuits and
container, cards, 1 towel, 1 dressing gown.
On paper, it doesn’t look much to show for 60 years, but they are
tributes to a man for whom avarice and materialism were anathema, and I stand
crying next to a half-eaten tin of biscuits where, true to form, Dad has eaten
only the plain and left the chocolate.
And then, as now, I give thanks both to, and for, my Dad.
