Dear Friend,
When our Dad was born, Nana suffered from post natal depression. She went away from him and he was left to his father and maternal grandmother’s care. As a man his relationship with both was fragile, like a geological fault line, he was prone to earth quakes and volcanic eruptions in their presence.
When Nana came home he’d not want to leave her. Would make himself sick to avoid school. The educational psychologist told him to stop being a naughty boy, which to our Dad only made him more determined.
That he loved us, our Mam, Kevin and me - there’s no doubt. We were his world, and Mam was his rock.
He just never knew how much he meant to us. The way the world shaped him, like so many men of his generation he missed the one thing that mattered more than all of the other stuff. We just wanted to know him.
The smell of him, the old spice and tobacco smoke. The mysteries of his Egyptian wallet. The black and white photographs he carried in there. The receipt from their honey moon hotel. We were fascinated by him. He never understood. Maybe men don’t know how much they are loved.
When we entered our teens we had to go off the rails. Reject the world of our childhood. That hit him hard and he took to his bed sobbing. I think I was fourteen when we witnessed the hurt pouring out of him. He blamed me and my world tilted forty five degrees, teetering into a slow roll, twisting like the coils of a snake, meat and potatoes for the false self.
Towards the end, I got what I wanted.
A hospital room. Dad’s body bloated by years in the chair in the front room with a bottle and the t.v. Scarring in the tissues of his brain. His clothes at home in the empty house. Those strange hospital robes that look like one huge babies bib, tied at the back. We sit side by side holding hands as the sunlight fills the room and we listen to sound of our own breathing, the occasional squeaking of a nurses shoe on the linoleum of a hospital earmarked for closure.
He pats my hand and sighs. No words. No need for those. Who can put it into language? The mysteries of love.
At the end of the line.
It’s never too late.
If you’re a father, just know, all we want is to know you.
Beneath all surface appearances.
There is only love.
Till tomorrow
Love
Mikey