So we dropped my father to his hospice for some respite care today. Two daughters, a granddaughter, a best friend and me, the elder of his two sons.
He was diagnosed finally with pancreatic cancer a few months ago after 7-8 months of jaundice and other complications.
I feel numb to this. My mum died of pancreatic cancer 5 years ago. She was heroic in her fight for life, her dignity, her determination. She lived her final year as she lived her life, thinking of others. Mostly of my sister and I, her two kids, and how she could help them through the pain and journey they would face without her. She helped enormously, she always helped me enormously. The sound of her voice at the end of a phone line, just the thought that she was alive made me lighter.
Ever since my childhood when my father was absent, first because he chose to work in jobs where he was either abroad or working nights or some other system that was making him, and he thought us, the most money. Because money has been the focus of his life. Not his first wife or his first kids. Secondly he was absent because he was excluded, mum first left him when I was 10? I think I was 10. He had gotten drunk on New Year’s Eve they had an argument and he punched her. Gave her a black eye and stitches.
This was in Algeria, mum brought my sister and I back to the uk and built a life where we were the centre. A house next to our school, walks in the woods, teaching us, learning with us, calligraphy, Shakespeare, taking us to any before or after school activity we showed an interest in. Swimming, rugby, she was chief cook, bottle washer, handyman, taxi driver, but always tried to show us how to do things for ourselves. Never beaten by a task she had an iron resolution to achieve for her kids.
Gradually, pleadingly our father said he was sorry, he had changed, was a different man, he’d do anything to put things right. He wormed his way back in on the back of my mum’s commitment to do… the best for her kids. She thought we needed our father in our life.
Later, I was 15, on another work placement to Dubai, my mum and I again left on a night flight after he got drunk and lashed out, again. I remember washing the blood out of my jumper in the airport loos as in the scuffle to get out of the house he hadn’t punched but drunkenly tried to grab mum, I leapt in between and his big divers watch sliced a big cut in my cheek.
We left they divorced, he lied to his family about the maintenance he paid, he lied about the circumstances as to how they ended up apart, he lied about hitting my mum, he built stories. “Jennifer had me by the balls, I had to get her off” a sound excuse for drunkenly punching your wife in the face, giving her a black eye worse than any I’ve had over the years playing rugby, leaving her needing 3 stitches in her eyebrows that left a scar for the rest of her life.
My sister and I kept in touch with his brothers and sisters. They were our Irish family, they provided a reason to be proud of our genetics, they still show huge love and affection. His sister Trish my most favourite aunt who has always looked after us and loved us without agenda makes me proud provides balance.
When my father was finally diagnosed one of the phrases he used was “wanting to learn from my mums experience” I choked in my head. You’ve never learnt a lesson in your life Paul. You just got to the point where lies couldn’t sustain you. His psychologically unbalanced second wife edged us out of his life, a long time before he belted me in the face when I was 19?20? For saying that I needed to cover past events if we were to have a relationship she had been saying “there,there Paul it’s not your fault” and he has always been weak enough to try to build stories around why nothing is his fault.
When he hit me in the face I put him in a head lock and told him I wouldn’t let go until he calmed down. He had always scared me as a child, always made me want to protect my mum from harm in any random supermarket, car park, anywhere in public that I thought “a man” might hurt her. Because it was men that you had to be scared of? No, just some of them. My uncle, my mum’s brother has been one of the most solid loving dependable members of my family that taught me men are fine it’s just the damaged ones you need to be wary of.
There are bags of excuses for my dad. His Down syndrome sister was abused by his father, he ran away when he was 15 to join the navy. It’s just, they are excuses. He has never learnt to look outside himself, he is the weak man that has not learnt from experience. He has just focused on fault not being his.
He would probably say he has said sorry, asked forgiveness. After he hit me and scared the wits out of my sister we left and sought refuge at our Gran’s house, with our aunts. He came round and said we had to go back with him. They told him to go away. I didn’t talk to him again for 15?16?17?18 years? My aunt Trish asked me if I would talk to him and I said ok. I had come to terms with having no contact with my father because he was not a force for good in my life. He turned up fat and grey, occasionally in tears, a broken man. The lies weighing heavy on him mentally and physically. I listened, he said sorry in a few places I thought this was important for me not to be bitter not to hold on to anger.
He came to my wedding, as did my half brother and sister. Slowly after then his second wife complained about not being invited. He was late for lunches, gave all his kids £500 per birthday because money has always been his way of showing “affection”. He “treated” them all equally.
My mother died asking him to be equal in how he looked after his kids on the phone call she made before she died. He’s made me a fifth of his will, his 4 kids and “wife”.
He is building stories again in his lead up to death. He’s rented a house near my sister so she can care for him as he does. He was admitted for some respite care at the hospice she never needed it from. In the place where I went to counselling with my mum and we held each other and wept because she didn’t want me to feel like I had to protect her she wanted me to look after me.
I feel like I have to protect her now because the weak, fat cunt that punched her, tried to control her, tried to make her a possession because he couldn’t stand how bright and vibrant, honest, talented and beautiful she was is pissing over land thinking it makes him look better. Being cared for by the same people, wanting to be buried in the same place, it’s him trying to insinuate she still has a connection to him.
Trish and another sister Sue came over last weekend to see him. At one point my wife told them I was struggling. Trish hit the nail on the head, “you haven’t forgiven him”. I said I would try, I could, to rid myself of the weight of hate that my mother wouldn’t want me to bear.
I have turned up to meetings with doctors, driven him on holiday, listened to his pain and woe because in some way I feel that I have to.
My mum said before she died that she became her own parent when her own died. That’s what I need to do now. As my wife said this morning I need to do what I think is right.
I just need to decide if that’s telling this dying weak man of the hate or just saying some weak drunk, who wasted his life lying to himself is almost gone.
Do I tell him I couldn’t give a damn about him, give his money grabbing wife my 20% and get busy dying? Maybe because the alternative is telling lies that I love this man, I don’t. I don’t love him, I feel bad because I have tried to please him rather than be true to myself.
He is not my father. My father was a dream I talked to my mum about when I was a child. It was the same fantasy she had about a husband, he never lived up to his responsibility, he had heaven on his plate but he chose consciously or not to bring it crashing to earth by never taking the challenge of being the bigger man, admitting fault, working on your shortcomings with the one you love because life without them would just be unbearable. He chose to think of him.
Fuck Paul. I need to go and grab hold of my wife this second and ask her how I can help her in anyway. Squeeze her and look up to the sky and say “thanks for making me strong enough to love this woman Mum, I couldn’t have done it without you”
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