The phone had rung at ten past five in the morning, summoning me from a restless sleep. It had been my brother uttering the words I so dreaded and yet expected.
“It’s Dad,” was all he had said. Just those two words conveying more meaning than an entire speech. I knew without asking what he meant. My father had died.
“Ok,” I’d replied, all trace of sleep vanishing instantly.
Once I had hung up, I got up and made myself a tea. It’s strange the way habits take over in a time of crisis. Find out you have a major illness, make a tea. Break up with a woman, make a tea. Lose a loved one, make a tea. But make a tea I did. And then I sat there in the predawn light and thought about my father. The things we had done, seen, and shared. A whole lifetime flashed before my eyes in the time it took for the sun to rise.
Like the time I was six years old and we had stood on the cliffs that overlooked our hometown and watched water spouts race across the channel, one of the rarest things a man can see, and I saw them with my father. There had been three of them, none of them taller than a meter, but all so very real in my memory.
Then the time we had gone to a museum in a nearby town flashed into my mind. Now that had been a strange day. Dad had been so excited about taking me there; just so I could see the guardian of the museum doors – a huge stuffed polar bear. I can see it now, all twelve feet of it rearing above me in all its splendour and glory, staring down with claws out and a permanent roar etched on its fearsome face.
I had been so afraid but my father had been there to protect me, something he had always done, but something I had until now never realised. It’s strange that the true heroes of one’s life are invisible until they are gone.
And then unbidden into my mind came the funny things my father had done. I hadn’t wanted to laugh then, in fact, thought I’d never laugh again. But as we all know, that is never the case. I smiled as I remembered the time when my brother and I had been kids and Dad had pretended to be unconscious when he had been fighting with us. The time our car caught fire and like a stricken World War II bomber we had just barely made it home with smoke pouring from beneath the bonnet.
All these thoughts raced through my mind making me laugh, making me cry, and making me remember. And then I recalled the time I had spent with him in the hospice. The roles were reversed then, the son caring for the father. Weeks I had spent with him, just the two of us and the night.
The things we talked about and the things we shared. I learned more in those few weeks about him than I had in the lifetime before. We talked about everything and nothing: God, death, life, and my own children. And things that even now I can’t bring myself to share with anyone.
We read a book together, well I read, and he listened. A book that we never finished and one that I have never found again. I watched him grow thinner and thinner as his time grew close but I’ve never been prouder of anyone in my life. He met death with courage and humour and with a quiet dignity that was humbling to watch.
All these thoughts and more swirled in my mind, images of childhood and fun. Images of adulthood and responsibility. But through it all he had been there with a quiet word, a quick comment, a sudden burst of dry humour. But now all that was gone, never to be heard again. It was with a heavy hand that I picked up the phone and dialed my girlfriend.Thankfully, I didn’t even have to speak.
“He’s gone,” she said, her voice as soft and loving as ever.
“Yes,” I answered, more to hear my own voice than to answer her question.
“I miss him already,” she said, her voice full of tears.
“Me too,” I said, unable to think of anything more to add.
“Call me later, if and when you can.” As always, she knew the right thing to say and the right thing to do.
Then she was gone and I was alone again with my thoughts. And once more I was a child going to the zoo with my father to see all the marvelous animals. I was standing there holding his huge hand in mine again as we saw a tiger up on its hind legs, its giant form pressed against the enclosure. I wasn’t afraid. How could anything hurt me while my father was holding my hand?
We saw so many things together, shared so many memories, things that to anyone else would be meaningless but to me meant the world. I cried as I showered and I cried as I dressed and I cried as I left my flat to meet my brothers and do what had to be done, to view the shell that lay in a hospital bed, empty and void.
Our father was gone and yet he lived in the three of us, each of us with our own memories of him, each with our own pain and sorrow. And yet each with a shared relief that his pain was over and he was at rest. I missed him then and I miss him now. But something he said to me when I was a child comes back to me as a man, something that doesn’t give me comfort, but does make me remember him and his stories, of which there were more than a few: “Son,” he would say, “only dragons live forever.”
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