 |
| Getting to know my father, in the mid-1950s |
It’s a strange sensation to wake up and discover it’s the 24th of May, as happened to me this morning. Or at least, it has been a little odd for 37 years now (and it amazes me to realise it has been that long).
It was on that day in 1983 that my father died.
For 35 years, it was particularly difficult because my mother always took it badly. She had the terrible misfortune of being a widow longer than she was married: she survived my father for 35 years, having been married for 32.
Each year, I would ring her and wonder how to broach the subject. Should I bring it up? Should I let her raise it? If I spoke first might I upset her by reminding her, or if I waited to let her mention it, might I upset her by seeming to have forgotten?
Yes. She wasn’t easy, my mother. Many fine and attractive qualities but being simple to know and get along with wasn’t one of them.
I would always suggest to her that we shouldn’t fixate on the 24th of May, but rather concentrate on the 15th of September, his birthday, which was always a good day in the family. A day to celebrate rather than a day to mourn. But poor woman, she grieved all the same.
Well, she died nearly two years ago. So this year, I am going to mark the death of my father not with a lament, but with a celebration. A brief overview of his life in photos.
Here he is in his first year. This would have been late 1921 or early 1922.
He was brought up in Brussels, and here he is at four walking up one of the main streets with his mother.
In 1936, he was 15 and in the boy scouts.
By the early 1940s, he was in uniform again, but for war service in the Royal Air Force.
In 1951, he married my mother in Genoa. And why not Genoa? The obvious place to get married, for an Englishman raised in Belgium and who met his wife-to-be in Paris.
They stopped in Nervi, near Genoa, before honeymooning near Naples. He then took up a position he held for sixteen years, at the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation, in Rome (which is where both my brother and I were born).
In 1960, he posed rather well, I think, by the River Congo, while serving with the UN Emergency mission. He returned to that country with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in 1967, after his stint in Rome.
In 1964, we had a rather good holiday in what was then Yugoslavia, and stopped at various places on the way back to Rome, including Venice where you can see him feeding the pigeons in St Mark’s Square with my brother.
In 1977, he was approaching retirement, still with the UNDP but at its headquarters in New York.
He retired to France, to Michauroi, a hamlet lost in the countryside of the Charente Department. He loved being there, though he and my mother would also travel to England regularly, staying in a flat they rented in Bromley. Here he is (at right) with my mother (at the back near the centre) and some friends. At that time, he only had two years ahead of him.
He had a rich and varied life and did a lot of things that mattered to him – his war service, his work for the UN in the Congo Emergency, his work on projects for the UNDP. He died far too young, at 61. His style of life had done nothing for his health, however satisfying it was in other ways.
Even if he hadn’t died then, I don’t suppose he would have made it till today. He’d have been rising 99 now. But I still miss him. He was an excellent father and a lot of fun.
Which is what I prefer to mark on the 24th of May.
2 comments:
I know the feeling. My dad died at 67 on the first of October 1979, although the date that we mark is 10 Tishrei, which is Yom Kippur. He died that morning. So the date can never come as a surprise. My parents had almost 38 years, and my mom survived him by 15 years. But she did pretty well for most of those 15.
May his memory always be a blessing for you.
It is indeed a blessing. As I take it, your memory of your father is to you. And it must be good to go into Yom Kippur with such memories as company.
And I'm glad your mother lived her last fifteen years well.
Post a Comment