This page will be dedicated to my father who passed away on the 1st August 2004 before his time was due. He was followed by his sister Wynne, within a year.
There will be a lot of pictures which I will eventually condense into thumbnails so you can click on them to enlarge and save if you wish.
I will probably go babbling on about what it is like to loose a father and the repercussions within a family. This is not just for my benefit to vent, but might be a help to others with this pending peril. This page is not about me and my feelings, but hopefully an open account of fathers life (and Death), warts and all. And hopefully a fitting tribute to this 'Quiet' Gentleman.
I use the word Gentleman in it's fullest sense, he truly was a Gentle man, and one of the last of a dieing breed. The world does not produce gentlemen anymore, old fashioned standards that are scoffed at these days. He was probably not the easiest of guys to get to know and perhaps came across as being a stick in the mud. But I have to say he was one of the funniest men I have ever met with a deep black humour that flowed over many peoples heads. The only other person that compares is his brother Eric, who has a side splitting sense of humour. Not sure where they got it from, their father was a stern Victorian man who I never remember even smiling, but still waters run deep? Their mother was a petite bubbly lady though.
Having a relatively sheltered life until the war, he was probably not dealt the best hand, one minute in the Air training Corps, ready to join the RAF do his bit for Britain. Next he was de-mobbed for having a colour blindness and ended up 2000' underground in a coalmine in Yorkshire as a Bevin Boy! In hindsight, this was probably the best place to be in a country at war. And there he stayed for about 4 years, it was a tough hazardous job which was overlooked by most in London. However the end result in father's character was it made him an extremely patient man, and very fit. I have never met someone with his tenacity. His attention to detail was incredible in everything he did, from his drawings and art, to building models and houses. Totally infuriating of coarse and a hard act to follow but a pleasure to witness. Again, today is it all press a button, delete and mass production.
So onto the demise of father, a sensitive subject in most families and ours is no different. Though I have to say I thought we were. I have seen many families brake under the strain of grief, which transcends all classes and backgrounds. Somewhere along the line it always seems to get nasty, seen everyday in the tabloids. And the common root seems to be greed of one type or another. Greed for attention, greed for praise, greed for their share of the estate etc. What was once probably a well balanced family can easily have the scales tipped one way or another through these stressful times. I am not saying that ours fell into former, on the contrary. But we did have our moments and I still do not see eye to eye with one of my sisters.
We all knew dad’s days were numbered, he was diagnosed with Prostate Cancer, which he kept to himself for a number of years, a shame as it would have helped us all if he had been open from the start. Especially me being 12,000 miles away, I would have liked more time to spend with him, but everybody must say that after the event regardless of how much time they did manage to spend with there loved one. Followed by the inevitable twangs of regret in not saying the things you wanted to say and doing the things you should have done.
Most people are touched by the loss of a close one at sometime during their life, but it is not until you witness it 1st hand that it brings home all the facets of what really happens behind the scenes when loosing someone. It isn’t pretty, and in most cases it is not dignified. The stresses and strains on all around is magnified. It brings out the good and bad. I will not being going into the gritty details of what went on in our family, unfair to wash our linen in public when I am the only one with the washing machine.
To be continued….
