Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER`
– a story from props and prompts
It was brilliant, the letter my Dad wrote just before he died. ‘We’ve had a bad year health-wise’ he wrote, and went on to list all the children’s’ ailments. ‘And for me it’s been even worse,’ he wrote, ‘I have advanced cancer.’ Three weeks later he was dead. When I asked my mother if Dad had known he was going to die, she said he always hoped that he’d get better. But he didn’t. The hope however kept him going to work each day, across town, an hour and a half each way until the very last minute.
Originally he’d gone to the doctor with symptoms which the doctor thought may have been the mark of something serious. Dad was sent off for chest X-rays, on which nothing bad could be seen. But he didn’t get any better. Instead he continued to go downhill, until eventually his doctor ordered a second chest X-ray. By this stage it showed a lung cancer so advanced that nothing could be done. ‘Riddled with cancer’ as they used to say. Dad’s letter said he was ‘hoping for the best,’ but the best turned out only to be a quickish death.
One minute he was there, next minute he was gone. Dad was admitted to hospital the night before he died. We kids gathered out in the street, surrounding the ambulance, and watched as they loaded him in. It was the third of January, and Andy had been admonished for buying Dad a cigar for Christmas. Why? What’s wrong with giving a cigar, the traditional Christmas gift to father from son, to a man about to die from lung cancer?
Fiona wasn’t there as part of the little posse surrounding the ambulance, so she got to go and visit Dad in the hospital that evening. For the rest of us, that was the last time we saw him. Into the ambulance, then dead. The hospital rang early next morning to say he had died.
I imagine it was expensive to have the after-the-funeral-drinks at the golf club, but there was no way we could have had them at home. Our place, in my memory, would have been a tip – abode of numerous children, depressed mother, dying father. So after the funeral the adults headed off to the golf club, presumably for tea and sandwiches. Perhaps a sherry? Or as I’ve learned more about Dad, perhaps a beer or a scotch?
Finally, Dad was gone and life went back to normal. Or did it? No, a group of his friends and colleagues decided they’d help us out, and spent quite a few weekends trying to get the neglected house and yard in order. One even had us over for a regular Sunday roast.
In later life I’ve found out more about Dad, which often leads me to ask ‘who is this man, really?’ To me he was a great Dad, built up to perfection by the fact that he was dead, and hence ill could not be spoken of him. All was memory, reminiscence of the good things. His powerful intellect, his humour, his interest in people.
It’s only as an adult I’ve realised he was, in fact, just a man. So many good points, so many bad. It seems he was a drinker, a womaniser, a gambler, an intellectual snob, and not always kind. But he was my Dad.