Truppence a Go.

No tears today dad¦.or tomorrow either. Does that sound wicked; surely I should be remembering the anniversary of your death with some kind of sorrow? Well, you made that kind of difficult for us, popping your clogs on the 29th February 1996. Should I remember it every four years or toss a coin to choose on the other three years? You would appreciate the irony, being a gambler for most of your life. Of course you could say you planned it so you'd get two days of mourning, but that wasn't your style. Grand entrances and exits were entirely another matter. Flamboyant, eccentric or just plain ornery that was you in a nutshell.

What's that? I missed it? Mum gets a few poems you don't get any?
Actually you got half of one, but that's another story. The truth is I couldn't sum up your life/death or in-between without going way overboard. Readers don't want epic poetry; they want nice neat lines and suitable metaphors. No, I think it's better this way.

I can't say you were a great dad when I was a child you were hardly ever there. Driving around the country and mostly appearing when I was fast asleep. Still, you were pretty good with the presents, except when you were on a losing streak. Did you ever guess the stories I made up about you? You were a spy, a government agent, a pirate, whatever I wanted you to be at the time. On your rare appearances I remember getting a bag of sweets, a tiny doll or a colouring book. If the horses were running well, even a ten bob note, though mum kept most of that back for a rainy day, and did it rain a lot sometimes!

I always knew I was your favourite child, thruppence a time for combing your hair. You had lovely hair, a rich dark brown, and so silky except when you used the Brylcream. I hated giving up the comb to let my sisters take their turn. Most of all I loved burying my head in your jacket, which always smelt of you, a mixture of pipe-smoke and diesel oil. I know now that you were a good mechanic as well as a driver; you could patch anything up with a bit of tape and a lot of luck. I have a memory of the one and only time you took your belt to me for breaking a mirror. You cried more than me and gave me sixpence afterwards.

I think you really became a proper dad when I was well into my twenties, how you got so angry with my 1st husband who beat me up. It's pure chance he's still alive to tell the tale. I made loads of mistakes, dad. I couldn't help it; there was something inside me that attracted the worst kind of men. You and mum stood by me, but it was you that accepted me for what I was, the only man in my life to ever do that.

You became a proper father to my daughter when her own father didn't want to know her. Along with your other, younger grandchild, you took them walking in the fields, played horses and acted the fool by dressing up as Father Christmas, a role you eventually took on for many years after your retirement for the department stores. You were the only father my daughter ever had, your proudest moment the day you went to London to see her graduate from the university with a 1st class honours degree in English. That was the last she saw you healthy, you had a heart attack a short while later, when she was out of the country teaching English in Greece.

That Christmas you had a stroke, the one which was to kill you eighteen months later. We all lived through months of hell, while you struggled to get well. Still, you made it to your other granddaughters wedding, I'm looking at the picture right now, you still handsome in your suit and tie, mum stood behind you in your wheelchair, you never walked or talked again but your eyes spoke your words.

There are many photographs, you at my daughter's graduation, shaking hands with David Bellamy, an honorary professor at her university. What a big step for the thirteen-year-old miner who never finished his education. There's a small one of you and me, taken on holiday at the Isle of Wight, I'm leaning on your shoulder, my hat in hand, and you with the ubiquitous pipe in hand. Another rare one taken with mum in happier times. I don't need the photos, I have my own personal memory snapshots, but one day your namesake, Jack, your great-grandchild, will want to see his great-grandfather. I wish you had been at my daughter's wedding, along with mum who passed away a month before. Perhaps you were there, who knows?

That last week of your life, long after I took mum home to bed, I'd sneak back in, sit at your bedside when you couldn't sleep. You'd often smile, looking around the room as if there was something there that made you smile. Were you seeing something not yet granted to me, or were you then deciding to quit this world in your own time?
I left you at 3am on the 29th February 1996; you passed quietly in your sleep at 6am. Awkward bugger, fancy slipping away on a day that isn't real? One made up to bring the modern calendar into line with those extra 24 hours?

I'd like to believe you are still there, just stepped out of time until we catch up with you.
So, no tears today, dad, no tears tommorow, I know you will be waiting there for me when my time comes.

In memory of Jack T¦¦¦. May 1920 to 29/2 /1996.

© Lisa Fuller February 28th 2006.