Father's Day- And the Awfully Big Adventure Of Living.

Everyone reaches a détente with their grief over the death of someone they loved. Time has a way of making all hurt a chronic and even manageable condition.

My dad's last Father's Day was in June 2018.

That month is a blur to me now of trips with my father to Ottawa and Toronto where we met politicians and advocated to make Refugees Welcome. Five months later, the light in my dad’s eyes made a brilliant flash like the burst from a camera bulb in the 1950s before becoming forever still. Even if you live to 95 as he did, there just does not seem to be enough time to experience the wonders and sorrows of our bitter-sweet existence.

Cold to luck were the cards dealt me after my dad's death. First, a rectal cancer diagnosis, then radiation during the lockdown, followed by surgery when the world sequestered itself in their homes to save themselves from covid's airborne lethality. A slow, haphazard recovery or, more exactly- coming to terms with my new normal while observing how society, impatient to return to its normal was willing to jettison empathy like they were ballast rocks to a ship needing speed.

And this year, the world- trying to find a new cost of living crisis rhythm to call normal, and me- not yet cured of cancer- being diagnosed with interstitial lung disease.

 I am not alone in clinging to life in the debris of our society ruined by the greed of the 1% like a shipwreck survivor holds onto the side of a damaged lifeboat in the ocean.

Still, the ebb and flow of my human existence makes me think a lot about my dad and the relationships we all have with our fathers, or they have with their children and their dads.

When I was growing up, Father’s Day was not a big deal as it is now. That is not because today, we cherish- the roles dads play in our lives more. It is because capitalism never misses an opportunity to exploit our human emotions for the profit of its corporate entities.

The first Father’s Day I remember when I paid tribute to my dad, was when I was eight. My family presented him with an electric grass trimmer. That was in 1971, and we lived a carefree middle-class existence created by a fully functioning Welfare State.

It was a different world when my dad was eight in 1931 for him and his working-class generation. There was no social safety net, and your survival depended on luck, good health, and animal instincts. Tough decisions were made in that year.

My dad's mother sacrificed the weakest in their family. The weak link was my granddad, who was older than her and disabled from a workplace accident.

She abandoned my granddad for another man who still had enough brawn to earn his keep and feed her children.

Much of my dad’s character in youth, middle age and then in his final years of living was shaped by that event which was both an act of betrayal and survival. Despite being a child when the abandonment occurred, my father never shook a notion he failed to protect his dad.

From that was born a lifelong urge to root for the underdog and protect and nurture those closest to him.

When my brother Peter became ill with schizophrenia, my father devoted his retirement years to his wellbeing whilst also caregiving my mother, who became seriously ill with Rheumatoid arthritis. She died when my dad was a hale and hearty seventy-six. When she married my father in 1947, my mum saved him because she gave him the love he needed to survive the experiences he underwent as a boy. He knew my mum's destiny would have been different, perhaps even greater, if she had married instead an Iranian man with who she had a passionate love affair in the 1940s.

Her dying at seventy made my father feel, my mother, had been cheated out of life and that he never was able to probably care for her in her sickness- while my brother's mental illness stole their waking hours.

That my brother Peter died at fifty from pulmonary fibrosis ten years after my mum was the cruellest cut to my dad, who had faced sorrow's sabre on many occasions throughout his life.

My father came with me to pick up my brother’s ashes from the funeral home. We didn't say much. Some sardonic laughter was exchanged when I sarcastically commented that the funeral director greeted me in shorts as if he was barbequing clients in the back.

During those days and weeks- when our grief was as sharp as broken glass, people close to us said. "Your dad will die soon because his heart is broken.” If he had died within a year or two of Peter's passing, I'd be different now. I'd have almost drowned in a tsunami of grief and I would have understood myself less. My guilt at not saving anyone or relieving their burden would have embittered me.

Maybe it was my grief over my brother dying when he was on the cusp of his art being discovered that motivated me. Or maybe it was my desire to find something that gave my father a sense of purpose and accomplishment. I don't know. I know we have a duty of care to those we love to keep them feeling relevant and loved.

My way was to create the conditions where my dad could use the last years of his life to redeem a past made sorrowful by poverty caused by the greed of the 1%.

I still don't know if I did the right thing for my dad by helping him become Harry's Last Stand. Maybe, it doesn't matter.

Maybe what matters most was it was an awfully, big adventure that made us understand and love each other better. Until my dying breath, I will miss that journey we took together more than when we arrived back on shore, aware of who we were.

As always, thank you for reading my sub stack posts because I really need your help this month. Your subscriptions to Harry’s Last Stand keep the legacy of Harry Leslie Smith alive and me housed. This month is proving to be real scramble to get next months together. So if you can join with a paid subscription which is just 3.50 a month or a yearly subscription or a gift subscription. I promise the content is good, relevant and thoughtful. Take Care, John