Thursday 17 Jan
My Mother was born 91 yrs ago today and my Godmother 92yrs ago today. Both are now long dead and for two people who played such a huge role in my early life I rarely if ever think of them. Strangely enough I was far more effected by my Father’s death 12 years ago than I was of my mothers 17yrs ago. This would seem so odd to me because I was extremely close to my Mum when I was a child but never realyy felt as if I bonded with my Dad. I was a fat short sighted geeky kid with bad eyesight (unknown until age 11) who was utterly useless at any sports. Given that my Dad’s life revolved around sport, if you told him there was international competitive watching paint dry on one TV channel and the live Moon landing on the other he’d watch the paint drying because it was advertised as a sport. So you see nothing in common; add to this that my Dad was a typical 1950/60’s father, he went to work and the pub, and a man with such a short fuse that he could have an argument with a mirror* you can see that the odds weren’t exactly stacked in favour of us finding that we had a lot in common. I was a veracious reader and he didn’t read his novel, so far as I’m aware, for the first time until I’d left for University (strangely he got hooked on reading for a few months but then dropped it and, so far as I know, never again read a book). So why was I effected more by his death than theirs and why did I brood on his so much afterward?
I think the answer comes down to missed opportunities; as I said I was very close to my Mother when I was small, we had an extremely close and loving bond plus I spent the entire summer holidays for age 5 staying in Porthcawl with my Godmother (Aunty Tess) and establish a similar bond with her. The only close male relationship I had was with my Uncle Herb (the Richard’s family’s intellectual) and its perhaps for this reason that I’ve always been comfortable in the company of females (despite looking like the back end of a bus and being fat and sexually unsuccessful in my teens … perhaps I was their non gay gay friend) and really only comfortable in male company when I’ve been playing the super clown role. Who knows those are issues for another day. So back to the original question; how come I accepted the death of my Mother quite calmly but was knocked for six by the death of my Dad.
Part of the reason must hinge around expectation, my Mother was ill for a number of years before her heart attack and so he eventual passing, whilst a shock, had been expected. As for my Aunty Tess, for various reasons, I’d not seen since the mid 1980’s so when my Dad told me she had died, a few months after it happened, I suppose time and distance also softened the shock although I was racked with guilt that I’d not seen her for so long and never got to see her before she died. She went a bit bonkers in later years (there was a strong streak of madness in her family apparently) and she had made me promise, when I was a child, that if that happened to her I wouldn’t go visit but rather would remember her the way she was. Perhaps, subconsciously, I was honouring that promise but really I don’t know.
I never managed to father a child whilst my Mother and Aunt lived; despite increasingly desperate efforts Deb did not fall pregnant until we had been married for over 16 years. My mother passed away in 1995 and her first grandchild finally appeared in Oct 1997. Tess had also gone by this time and so really my only surviving close relative was my dad and he was smitten with his grandson. For the first time in our lives he and I connected via Nat and this was fantastic. Hadn’t realised how much I wanted this. Then we had another pregnancy that ended in tragedy (Katie was still born dying only 10 days before her expected delivery date) and then there was a third that resulted in Hannah. She was born in December 2000 and in January 2001 my father suffered a massive stroke and a week later died. His Mum had lived until she was 96 and only passed then due to a bad fall and he at 79 was as fit as a fiddle and looked hardly any older than he had when I was a kid. I think I’d expected him to be there while both the kids grew up, to share in their achievements and to tell me that I’d turned out to be a bloody good Dad and finally give me some of the praise I been denied as a child but; the s*d spoiled it all by being awkward enough to die unexpectedly. This was why I brooded I was angry that after all this time after finally establishing a non-confrontational relationship the old blighter went and died on me!
Oddly Nat kind of remembers Granddad Bill even though the last time he saw him, before we visited him in hospital, was in October of 2000 when we were returning from a brief holiday in Pembroke. Nat had his third birthday that October so he’s got a heck of a memory in so far as he remembers the earlier visits. Hannah of course being only 10 weeks old when he died has no memories to remember.
*Incidentally my Mother too could have an argument with a mirror so my memories of childhood are filled with endless arguments with me usually at the centre of them (this is why I get angry when the kids start bitching with each other because it triggers, what Deborah used to refers to, as my Wales mode where I get into my teenage mind set and just let rip too
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