Father's Day- And The Awfully Big, Beautiful Adventure of Being Alive.

Détente comes even to grief. The relentlessness of time makes the hurt from the death of a loved one a chronic condition of forlornness.

Human existence is an ebb and flow of people entering one's life and then leaving it, like passengers on a crowded bus- until we too must move to the exit doors.

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

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 Dad’s character in youth, middle age and then in his final years of living was shaped by that event because it made him believe his survival was born from betraying his father. Despite being a child when the abandonment occurred, my father never shook the notion he failed to protect his dad.

From that came 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 well-being whilst also caring for my mother, who became seriously ill with Rheumatoid arthritis.

Mum died when my dad was a hale and hearty seventy-six. Her dying at the age of seventy, after many years of being disabled by a variety of illnesses, made my father feel that my mother's journey through existence had been short-changed.

Ten years after my mother's death, my brother Peter died at fifty from pulmonary fibrosis. His death was the cruellest cut to my dad and came close to killing him because sorrow can be a mortal blow.

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 man now and not the better for it. I certainly would have understood myself less and probably been embittered by how at 60 my health is on the decline from cancer, heart disease and a rag tag band of comorbidities that hover around me as flunkies for death.

So, I am glad I used that precious time from the age of forty-six to fifty-five, paying back the love my dad had shown me and all his children but giving him the old age he deserved. 

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 I desired 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.

Happy Father's Day, Dad.

Much love,

John

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