Sixty eight years ago today, my father was born.
I’m now at the age that he was when I was approaching my first birthday; I think about that, and feel weirdly… unprepared about life, and unfinished; I can’t imagine having a one-year-old in my life, right now, never mind three children (My sisters were five and approaching two years old, at that time). I think about the indecision and uncertainty I feel about life and my place in it and wonder how much of that he shared, back then, and wonder if he ever thought about that kind of thing at all or just got on with it because there were mouths to feed and people to teach.
I remember my dad in flashes, memories that are as much seconds out of context as full-blown stories, and in so many of them, he’s this ageless figure, permanently… what, early forties, maybe? “Dad-age,” I want to say, even though it’s possible that no-one’ll know what that actually means (I’m not sure I do). He only really started to seem like an old man after my mother died, and you could tell that he’d lost his own will to live.
I remember his visits to stay with us after that, him enjoying a freedom from real life in San Francisco, eating steak every night it seemed, and I remember, too soon later, the way he seemed confused and scared that last night, and holding onto my hand so tightly. The decision to switch off the machines helping him breathe and stay alive, and the emptiness of his body as we kissed him goodbye after he’d left.
My father never knew his own father. I often wonder what that was like for him; I am so much my father’s son (and my mother’s, for that matter), and see a lot of him in me, for better or worse.
Happy birthday, wherever you are, Dad. I love you.
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Content © Graeme McMillan, 2008-2009.
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