Two words rarely spoken - "MY FATHER"

I don’t write often about my father.

Millions of words written and yet so few of the man who made me what I am today. 

Unfair , perhaps.
Sometimes it makes me sad, other times I realize there just is not that much to say.

He was a deep, silent complex man.

Typical really of his era.

The men don’t cry type. 

Ask him how his day was, he’d say “fine” and wander off.

Ask him what happened at work and the answer was always, “nothing”.

He worked hard, and my sister and I needed for nothing, so I’m not about to slam the man.

Truth is he and my mother both suffered terrible childhoods. 

Both were abused physically and mentally and both were not raised by their own parents due to the times, the era , deaths or separations and the stigma in those days surrounding children without parentage was not a kind one.

That they grew up wanting to have children , did,  and raised us,  is testimony to them both.

For many years now I’ve actually tried to understand my father.

To forgive him his negligence of love and sympathies and to forgive me my disrespect of not understanding what made him the man he became.

Of those things I remember the most are these.

He was fixated on the Second World War, Vietnam and Korean wars. It was like he wished he’d fought in them, just a year or two shy of being able to, he never made it past the Reservist Army.

He loved the movie Apocolypse Now. He loved hard cover books and especially first editions and I don’t think I ever saw him cry. Not one tear.

He retired at 40. He had worked hard for 25 years at that stage.  Within a decade he attempted suicide and following that decades of psychosis, mental anguish and truly troubled times lay ahead.

When he was just my dad and before all his troubles, he lost him self within books, he wrote like the wind  and was a perfectionist in everything he did. Doctors say it was this self-imposed stress that made him so troubled later on.

For many years I tried to tell myself I would never be the man he was.

He never showed love or gave hugs, so I loved and hugged everyone.

He read books, so I refused to.

I worried that it was what lead to his troubled mind, and so for decades I never touched a book .

He wrote, I refused.

He was the quiet silent type who found no fun in anything, I became loud, riotous and laughed always making light of everything.

He married , I did not.

I tried so hard to not be him and all I ended up doing was missing out on so much.

I wish daily now that I had married; someone, anyone, I really want children but find at 43 I’m alone, fearful of being him so much that I am now worse off for it.

But the light of my plight truly dawned upon me a few days back in Mall whilst shopping for a gift for a special friend.

I found myself in a bookstore looking at all the titles and feeling in awe of the opportunities, the stories in which to get lost and to imagine other worlds and adventures. It was a candy store for the brain. I bought my friend two books and could have emptied the shop had I had the time. I can’t wait to return and to buy a few more.

Was it this escapism my father adored so much of books. I feel it was.

And the similarities did not stop there. The love of books made me think.

Of writing, well, lets just say what lay within me for many years waiting to be let out, finally has. Today I write like the wind as he did. I use a laptop thankfully, he used pen and paper and I still remember the pages under which he wrote. His penmanship so hard and firm and tight that he left an imprint three pages deep of everything he hand wrote, but so too does mine.

You see what strikes me as funny is that I have spent 40 years trying not to be my father and yet still I have turned out very much in his shadow..

I still have a better sense of humor I think, but I’m a perfectionist and can’t stand things that are not right. I’d prefer to walk away than to suffer something not as it should be.

He wrote, I write.

Fifteen books and counting actually in addition to millions of words in blogs and magazines articles every year.

He read. I read today like there’s no tomorrow.

He was the silent type, I love nothing more than being by myself and just watching life go by.

I have worked so hard to try and understand the man all these years that I have in fact had quite the learning experience myself. I have watched Apocolypse Now on DVD almost fifty times. Ten of those in French. to find what it was he needed to see. I think i get it now.

I have read much and watched much on the Second World War and I have learnt to read and write for my own living.

In the end , by learning about my father, I have learnt to be a better person. A better educated one and a more tolerant human being, one that sees both sides to many issues and writes about them.

I am not the man he was, but extremely close in many ways.

These are different times and thanks to him and my mother I had a happy child hood, not perhaps with him, but because of him.

He may not have been the teacher of all my lessons but through him and because of him I have learnt much. It has taken forty years to understand much of that , but I am glad now that I have and do.

If I could change the world and shift time and space and right the wrongs done to others I would clear history’s record and give my father and mother enjoyable childhoods, much like mine and my sisters.

We knew nothing but love and happiness from people who knew neither.

If evolution of happiness is to continue and the world become a better place,  then it is I who must forward on this knowledge and gift it  to a son or daughter of my own so that they lead a better more fulfilled life, leaving their legacy to the next generation and so on.

Parenting can not be easy.

My father certainly seemed to make it very hard, but in the end despite his silence, his emotionless manner and his lack of hugs, his psychosis , paranoia and rage , he created a child who found the answer to everything needed in life to make it a success.

I have been blessed with lessons good and bad and those I’ve had to seek to find.

And for that my father must be thanked.

To my father ,who’s life was never easy; you did good Dad and I love you so much for it.

xx