Good Grief:Looking for Dad

Looking the image of his late daughter; my dad in 1971 Another day, another bit of quality time with my teenage niece.  This time we made plans for a walk and a coffee over the Christmas holidays. What it actually ended up being was sitting in several traffic jams on the way to the alleged walk (that didn't quite happen), but coffee, cake and a good old gossip about all things late-adolescent all the same; boys, parties and a smattering of A-level bants thrown in for good measure.  Top of the goss agenda though, was the latest news from social media that my nephew (her cousin) had a girlfriend!  So exciting!  Luckily for me, my niece has lived close by to me and husband since she was about 4, and when we were child-free ourselves, I was on hand for babysitting, collecting from after-school clubs, and later for delivering what I hope was objective advice when things got difficult in her world. When my sister (her mum) died so suddenly in the summer I felt especially respo

Dad, around 16, shortly before his voyage to Australia Our cat turned 11 this year.  When me and my husband bought our first house, my clichéd idea that a cat would make the house a home would not shift.  I grew up in a cat household.  In the 13 years we spent in my family terrace, we went through roughly 900 cats, give or take. Most of them enjoyed bog-standard feline names: Jess, Jess II, Jess (the first Jess had lasted such a short spell, we felt we could safely recycle her name several times over- or was it a he?).  Anyway, shortly after another Jess went under a double-decker on the busy main road, we adopted Mottle and her son Timmy. Maybe my mum felt a radical change in name choice would bring better luck. We also took in a few strays, and had a brief spell with a kitten my sister bought with one of her YTS cheques, Bubbles.  Mottle was the stalwart, however, and despite sending my mother mad by sleeping on piles of important papers and pawing at the bedroom door, we loved

;+   Ma with my oldest sister, circa 1975 I quit my job recently. A cumulative result of life as a full-time teacher and full-time parent (read mammy) to two boys. In lots of ways it was an easy decision to make. I spent most of last year on maternity leave, and thoroughly embraced my role as a stay-at-home parent. I took pleasure in those tasks that so many working parents find stressful. Instead of hassling my son through his morning routine (breakfast, teeth, uniform: out), I made a point of walking him to school come rain or shine, buggy at the hip. On our journeys we marvelled at the orange morning skies, trudged through the wet sleet and kicked through the May blossom, practising counting in 2s, 5s and 10s as we went. And at the school gates I passed the time with fellow mums. At first, I felt like I was back at school myself. In playground full of adults, it can be hard to know where to place yourself. But through a combination of the children's party ci

Dad during his school days, in the late 1950s I spoke to my niece a few weeks ago. She has just started Year 12 (lower sixth to those of us born north of 1990), and she needed a copy of The Tempest for her A level Lit course. Rather you than me , I thought.  As the resident English teacher, I was more than willing to plunder the dusty store rooms of my school's almost redundant department store cupboards (so-narrow is our choice of texts, thanks to Mr Gove). Personally, I have never warmed to Shakes's supernatural-come-comedic shipwreck; the so-called comic relief that Trinculo and Stephano are meant to provide amongst the motley brigade of castaways has never done it for me.  Give me the maudlin tale of a son and his murderous uncle, or the shallow megalomaniac celtic king and his bloody endeavours any day of the week. It was 8.30 at night when I called my 16 year old niece, and I had just got in from a PiYo session; a double attack on both the summer paunch, a hangove

Today marks 5 years since I enrolled on my teacher training course, and 3 years before that, since I walked down the aisle with Mr Dubs, and 67 years before that, since my dad came into existence: September 5th 1942. The 5th September has been one of those dates that has been etched into my consciousness throughout the whole of my (almost) 37 years. Dad would have been turning 75 today if he was still around.  Collecting his free TV licence perhaps? When my first sister died- 'first sister' sounds so throwaway, as though she was a lover I had grown bored of, but 'first' she remains. After she had gone and the days became months, I worked like mad not to attach any significance to birthdays of dead people, by which I mean, her. 'Dead people don't get birthdays' I would tell myself petulantly.  Looking back, I suspect it was a form of self defence. As though, remembering to remember the recently dead with any more emphasis than was normally attached to the

Dad aged around 17, in the Australian army This is the photograph that sat on my bedside table until very recently. Countless times I have pored over it, sometimes furtively, by the light of my lamp after it was safe and my husband had turned over to his side of the bed. I absolutely love this picture.  Mainly, my dad's youth, his face still transforming from the podginess of early teens to a more defined structure of late adolescence. Secondly, his nonchalant stance; hat upturned and gently tipped to the right; cigarette laconically perched inside his left upper lip; arms crossed, fingers interlaced, thumbs apart and resting on his chest; a stance that projects confidence. Finally that expression; pupils just visible, as though glancing up; a mixture of indifference and uncertainty.  I do wonder how he did feel at this moment. And that is one of the most difficult aspects of death to digest.  You simply cannot ask that person ANY thing ANY more.  It feels like a brick wall

'It took a hurricane to bring her closer To the landscape' Grace Nichols, Hurricane Hits England Grief can be horrible; suffocating, interminable, heavy, bleak.  Sometimes it feels like you're teetering on a precipice of a cliff. In the fog. At night.  You want to have the temerity to step forward, but are unsure and afraid.  You are looking around for familiarity, but it can be hard to see further than your own hand. But it would be impossible to feel that way 24/7. Exhausting. No, instead these feelings exist mostly as an undercurrent to the daily mundanities that make up our existence. Getting in the shower, entertaining the kids, making tea, driving to work. Some days they come to the fore when nothing but a massive, heaving cry will ease the blockage, and others they murmur away in the background, making everything you see and touch seem just that little bit out of kilter. At least, that is my experience. It sounds draining; it can be draining. However, ther

Where to begin?  Well here I suppose, though really this story starts 37 years ago.  Scratch that, make that 74 and 11 1/2 months.  But let's not split hairs.  This story, this journey to find dad, started 2 months ago after a shocking family tragedy jerked me into action; or should I say, jerked me out of the inaction that had allowed me to procrastinate for so many years. And now I am here, on this Saturday tea time in late August, and on the advice of my good friend, P.B., trying to find somewhere to start.  So here goes. I am on a mission to 'find' my dad.  My father. 'Daddy'; that childish nomenclature that, despite the fact that we his children are adults, and most of parents ourselves, still use when discussing this significant absent being. But he is not lost, or missing; not divorced or voluntarily absent, or at the leisure of HMPS, but in fact, no longer with us.  You know?  Up there?  On the other side? He d ied. Ok, dead.  Daddy is dead.  So final wh