Dear readers my prediction at the end of Blog 8 that my life was about to take on a more gentler pace couldn’t have been more wrong. As some of you might already know, five days after I last blogged my Dad had a sudden and fatal heart attack on the morning of August 28th, he was 60 years old. Up until now I haven’t really spoken about my Dads death except with close friends and family and those people who needed to know where I work. I decided that because my Dad was one of my only most keen readers (although he never did sign up to follow me!) I should dedicate a Blog to him as my own personal obituary and as an act of catharsis.
For those of you who haven’t already clicked the back button on your browser fearing you were about to read a self-indulgent, depressing and suicidal Blog I thank you. I thank you because it means you either care about me and what I’m about to say or you just have a morbid obsession with my personal misfortune. Either way you’re my kind of reader!
Anyway I shall continue. I’m writing today’s Blog in a reflective philosophical mood as opposed to a sombre and mournful one. Some of what you’re going to read will be sad maybe even morbid but I’m not writing this with tears streaming down my face surrounded by empty boxes of Kleenex. I’m writing this to honour my Dad in a spirit of love and respect for the man he was. What I will say as some kind of warning is that if you are feeling down or at the other end of the spectrum feeling very happy I’d advise you not to read the rest of this Blog because when you’ve finished reading it I doubt it'll leave you with an uplifting positive feeling.
As I write this I am listening to music that reminds me of my Dad as a way of inspiration; a bit of Billy Joel, Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen etc. He liked musicians that wrote songs with a narrative, I seem to have inherited that trait from him. He generally had good taste in music although the less said about his Boyzone and Ronan Keating albums the better! Musical taste aside how can you accurately begin to summarise sixty years of life in one Blog? It’s difficult to find the right words and basically speaking it’s an impossible task. I want to try and write something that isn’t overly sentimental but accurately reflects what I and those that loved my Dad feel. I don’t want to vilify him or to canonise him. He always said that I was a smart-arse and I had to get the last word in so maybe it’s fitting in some dark twist of irony that that’s exactly what I’m doing.
This goes without saying but I liked my Dad, obviously I loved him he was my Dad, but I think had we been the same age he could easily have been a good mate. I know he was a moody sort tempered sod and had a hard exterior but anybody who really knew him knew he was a big softy at heart. When he was in a good mood it was almost impossible not to like him, his booming laugh and his effeminate mannerisms. I have a lot in common with him, good traits and bad, this is why I think I always felt close to him. Like everybody else who knew him though I was often a critic of his and if he was reading this he’d probably come out with some proverb about judging and being judged (he liked his proverbs). In spite of my criticisms I always knew that deep down he was a good man. He made mistakes but alas he was only human after all and maybe in my short life I never earned the right to judge him, for all his faults I know he had a much harder life than I’ve had.
During my life, hard or otherwise, I know any success I might have achieved is in no small part down to what he endowed me as a father, through nature and nurture. For every personal success he was also there during my failures of which there are many, like any good Dad should be. He was always supportive of my decisions even if he never did quite understand why I wanted to stay at school for the rest of my life, regularly joking that by the time I’d finished my education I’d be ready to retire and take up my destined career as a lollipop man. As well as supporting me throughout my life he also gave me a keen sense of morality, always allowed me my independence, he never told me what I should do and never enforced his regrets and worldview onto mine. I hope his strong sense of fairness, honesty and integrity have rubbed off on me. He had both a strong character and strong convictions.
Along with what I perceived as personal strength he was an animal lover and when choosing a pet he would always choose the runt of the litter. I can't begin to count how many different pets we had at the house while growing up and after I left home but one thing I can remember is that we never seemed to have one sane animal due to my Dads empathy for the underdog. Just to give you an indication of his love of animals I will write a short non-exhaustive list of some of the pets we had; cats, dogs, parrots, rabbits, guinea pigs, hamsters, rat, chinchilla, iguana, fish, parakeet, terrapin…this list goes on.
In combination with his fascination with animals he also had a strong work ethic, far better than I’ve ever had. He worked hard for most of his life and provided for me in one way or another until I could provide for myself. I know his life was worthwhile, especially in his role as a parent. He once confided in me that he thought he had let me down in his responsibilities as a father. I know I have no children of my own but I can’t imagine there are many worse thoughts that you can have as a parent than thinking something like that. I told him then that he hadn’t failed me in any way and at the time I wish I had know the proverb, “one father is more than a hundred teachers” and had said it to him, and I can honestly write these words now with my hand on my heart and say he never once let me down.
Before and after I left home way back in 2001 I thought that my Dad had begun to mellow with age and maybe I benefited from that being the youngest child (Golden-child if you listen to certain people). I also know that after some dark years in his life he began to become more content, to the untrained eye this might have been hard to notice but I could tell. I’m not sure if this happiness was because he’d finally got rid of all his own kids or that he’d swapped fathering me and took his grandson Thomas under his wing, a fair swap I’d say. I do know his later happiness coincided with meeting a new partner and subsequently remarrying. More recently though his physical health had begun to deteriorate and he was finding it hard to accept the onset of old age. Sixty years though is not old by today’s standards and nothing could have prepared me for the utter shock of his sudden, unexpected and fatal heart attack. His heart attack, large in magnitude and swift in effect might have saved him from the decrepitude of old age but it has denied me and the rest of his family and friends the pleasure of his company, his wisdom and his love.
I was fortunate enough to be back in Kirkby the day he died so I avoided the horrible situation of being told he’d died while I was in Sweden
This whole experience has left me somewhat confused. It’s a completely surreal feeling, I keep expecting someone to tell me it never really happened and my Dads still alive and I’ll see him next time I go home. This is in spite of seeing him within hours of his death at the hospital, feeling the last vestiges of warmth leave his body. In spite of witnessing the first signs of decomposition as he lay in his coffin. In spite of carrying his coffin from the hearse into the crematorium and in spite of holding the box that now contains his ashes. Still none of it seems real. It is like I’m still waiting for it to really hit home. Sometimes I have an overriding feeling that I’m on a high speed train and at some point the train might crash into a huge concrete barrier. Only the driver of the train can see straight ahead but I’m not driving the train and I don’t know who is. Passengers, of which I am one, can only see sideways. I can’t see straight forward and I worry what might be on the track ahead. It’s thoughts like these that make me understand why some people take strength from religion and why the whole god concept was created.
My Dad was a devout atheist though and I myself lack belief in a god-like higher power whether that higher power was created in the name of Judaism, Christianity or Islam (or any other religion). So at the moment I don’t even have belief or faith to comfort me that my Dad has gone to a better place and that I’ll see him again in the 'afterlife' when my threescore and ten years are up. This is not to say that I’m not a spiritual person and I do think that there are phenomena in this world that can’t easily be explained. Mysteries remain about our consciousness and the soul. Ultimately though as an empirical man of science I know that everything that was my Dad as I knew him, his body, his personality and his spirit died on August 28th 2010. There is no negotiating this fact and no second chance. Knowing this is the hardest thing I have had to accept in my life so far.
There seems to be a complete lack of justice to what’s happened but deep down I know that is just a reflection of my own infantilism. I’ve always known the world is not a fair or just place and other peoples’ loved ones die in much worse circumstances than those my Dad died in. Albeit where is the dignity getting struck down with a heart attack on your way home from work, collapsing just 150m from the solace of your own home?
The last few paragraphs have taken on a dark tone and for that I make no apology, I did warn you! I will finish by saying that I have been hoping for my Dad to come to me in a dream, he still hasn’t appeared yet and he hated being late. If he did appear in a dream and even if it was only a manifestation of my own consciousness I’d be content. Even to speak to him in the depths of my own subconscious would make me immensely happy. After all he now only exists in the hearts and minds of those that knew him. He was a man replete with contradictions and paradoxes and it would be nice to begin to disentangle all of these in my own mind if only to help me understand myself better.
The picture I have included below is from my first graduation back in 2003. To date this has probably been the one of the proudest days of my life so far, I only hope my Dad felt the same way too. My next graduation for my PhD is likely to be one of the hardest days of my life because he won’t be there.
Noel Henry Carter born Wednesday 14th June 1950 – died Saturday 28th August 2010. Survived by his wife Daphne, three children to his first wife Margaret; Lisa, Noel and myself and his eight grandchildren. With every future action we’ll remember you, with every failure we’ll take strength from you and with every success we’ll honour you. Love you now Dad and for the rest of my life.x
“If you love somebody you should go ‘head and tell ‘em, people never get the flowers while they can still smell ‘em.” Kanye West – Big Brother (paraphrased)
No comments:
Post a Comment