Remembrance

My dad was a man of his time. A product of his particular period in history. A man built from the Scottish granite mold. He worked hard. Played hard. He drank. He was a Johnson. The Johnsons. A family so stoic in their emotional control that they can make cast-iron look flimsy. The Johnsons don’t emote. They don’t even talk much. In my memory, I have never seen my father cry.

I am not my father. But I hope one day to be as good a man as he was.

With my dad’s passing, a truth occurred to me. A truth that I have spent most of my life unaware of. I needed him. I needed the reassurance of his being there. I needed his strength. I needed to make him proud. I needed his approval. I needed to know he loved me. This last now seems to be so obvious as to be laughable. 

So, let me tell you a few tales of the father I knew.

Picture a young boy – six or seven years old – helping his dad in the very fringes of their property in Scotland. We were new to the neighborhood. My dad was clearing barbed wire into a huge pile at the bottom of the garden. I was there to help. In my new jeans. I really wanted to help. To help him, I decided I would jump the pile of barbed wire. “Watch me, Dad.” I clearly remember him telling me not to do it, but it wasn’t a high pile of barbed wire. In my adult mind, I can still feel the tug of the barbed wire on my trousers and hear the ripping sound. I remember the look on his face as I passed, and of turning and running for the house even while still in mid-air. With my wee legs going flat out and my dad only having a standing start, I thought I could make it. Still think I might when I think back. It was only fifty steps to the back door.

I remember the impact of his foot on my backside, and of the surprise of watching both my legs fly up before me. I landed hard on my bottom. He lifted me up after. Dusted me off and sent me inside. Arse hanging out. Too stunned to cry. I had learned a valuable lesson. Dads were fast. Also. Who does that? For decades I thought of revenge. Of catching him picking up something from the ground and boom! Payback. I am sure he regretted it as soon as he did it. Almost positive he did. Almost. Also, also, I felt I had also let him down, and I didn’t like that feeling.

My dad was fast, at least back then. My dad had played the football. I asked him recently about his best game. He said he scored five goals in his first ever game playing for Cumbernauld Amateurs. I asked him if he could remember each goal. He looked at me like I was daft. “Two aff the heid, wan oan the volley, wan fae the spot, and wan aff ma erse while facing the wrang wey.” He then went on to give play-by play in excruciating joyous detail on each one.

My dad was a man’s man. George, Geordie, Jock sometimes, he fit seamlessly into that hard-working hard-drinking world. He was affable and companionable to friends at the bar, but mostly at home throughout my childhood he was quiet. Except when we did something wrong. In which case his voice, raised in anger, ONCE only, was enough to silence the forest creatures for miles around, and keep us all in check. He kept himself and his worries to himself mostly. That is how he parented. Quietly distant. As a child I sometimes wondered if he ever really wanted children, or if he loved us even. I know now he did. He loved us more than anything. But he especially loved us when we were weans.

When we were still quite young my dad stopped eating dinner with us. I think there was too much corned beef hash being thrown around one mealtime by his three bairns, and he finally snapped, “ENOUGH,” and stomped with his plate to the living room. After that day, until I left home at 18, unless it was Christmas dinner, he ate alone. You have to admire his stubbornness of sticking with a decision, once made. Johnsons!

Picture me again now. Nine-years-old maybe. Asleep in bed at 10.00 on a school night. Shaken awake. Beckoned with a “shush.” Back into the living room. Mum already abed. “Right, sit there and be quiet.” Spaghetti Western series on TV. Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, Eli Wallach. This was man’s stuff. Me and my dad doing man stuff. Every Wednesday for six weeks he’d sneak me out of bed. We’d sit, barely speaking, till the last bad guy fell, well after midnight. We didn’t speak of it after.

When I was 12 years old, I ran away from home. The reasons why now are foggy to me. I didn’t get far though. My dad caught up with me that night in a nearby toon. Leapt from the car and chased me down the road. I was too fast for him now though, but he brought me up with a word, “Richard, stop … son.” I heard the worry in the way he said “son.” I stopped. Went home. No kick in the arse this time. No shouting even.

When I was 14, my mum discovered my porn collection. It was a bit weak. Two pages from The Joy of Sex hidden in the bathroom. This was definitely not her area, so he had to deal with it. I was sent to see him, ashamed. “You don’t need this stuff, son,” he said. “If you needed this kind of stuff, I would have some.” And that was that. Move on.

At 18, I stood before him once more ashamed, to tell him, and my mother, that I had gotten my girlfriend pregnant and that I was going to be a father. I don’t remember what I expected him to say, but I didn’t expect it to be good. I’d let him down again. “Don’t worry, son,” he said. “It will just be more water in the soup.” For close to two years after the birth of our daughter my parents looked after her. So that myself and my wife could finish university. He was brilliant with her, my daughter, those two years. A different man.

Fast forward now through the rubbish years for us. Over the next two decades, my dad and I drifted apart. We both suffered through divorce and discovered love again. I moved to Canada and him eventually to Spain. He lost his new love to cancer, and to my eternal regret I never met her, speaking to her only once or twice by phone. They had a very short time together, but I understand it was a very happy time. For which I am glad.

My sister and her man became my dad’s landlords around this time, setting themselves up for a decade of a frustratingly loving but tough relationship with a grieving man, addicted to drink, who just didn’t see the point anymore. They were amazing with him on multiple occasions, nursing him back to health. I am eternally grateful for my sister’s tenacity and compassionate toughness. I honestly believe that she added years to our dad’s life.

No parent should have to outlive a child. About ten years ago we all lost when my younger brother, died. I could see nothing good in my brother’s death for anyone at the time. But looking back I think it gave my dad and I the start of the incentive we needed to work things out. So, slowly, with help from my wife, and my sister, and her husband, we have all helped to patch the divide. It has been a slow process confused by guilt, fear, distance, illness and alcoholism, but gradually the gap was bridged, and our lives all came together once again. There have been holidays at home and abroad, and laughter, and grandchildren were hugged and read to. He started to call me “son,” again sometime in that last decade.

My dad had a way with people. A generosity. A dry wit. A sharp mind. A great intellect. And a smile that could light up a room. He could fit into any group in a bar and quickly become a favorite after a couple of beers. It was his escape. He lived for a swally with friends, and a blether, in a good a social atmosphere, as all of those in his local learned. He told me it was only 39 steps away from his front door. I think it was often considerably more on the way home. 

The last couple of years have been hard on my dad, and hard on all of us, friends and relations combined. He has had highs and lows of course, but gradually his health made it harder and harder to make those visits to the pub happen. He would have done anything in his final days for one more quick drink in his favorite bar stool. The one with his name on it.

As he ailed, we began to see more and more of one another. “Too much,” he might have thought at times. But also, maybe, “Not nearly enough.” Time suddenly felt precious to him.

Recently, at his insistence, we started to organize lunches with his big brother and little sister. Even when he was barely well enough, we’d still set out for a sit down. A slow tottering walk from the car into the restaurant. A glass of red wine. And these lovely Johnsons who speak so seldom would blether away the afternoon. It was a bit like nobody else was there but these three. They were funny together. Like weans themselves again. Almost invariably tales about when they were children. I learned so much family history in such a short time, I felt out of breath.

And it cheered my dad. Sometimes too much. After daring a second glass of red one afternoon he decided to try and take his jumper off while walking when we got home. I heard the clatter from his bedroom, and a shout of “och referee?” on the way down. “I’m all right, son,” he said as we patched him up. A big scabby knee from that altercation. It is hard for me to say that out loud even now. “I’m all right, son.” 

So, in the end, we have spent a lot of time together. Swapping stories, watching daytime TV, calling bullshit, and trying to make one another laugh. We re-watched every Clint Eastwood spaghetti Western again. Sitting together, ad-libbing lines, and dissecting every scene, which we must have each seen a dozen times. As we watched, I would monitor him out of the corner of my eye, and when he nodded off, I’d hit pause. That can make a three-hour movie last a good while. “I was still listening,” he’d say, “just resting my eyes.”

My dad’s last couple of months were really quite hard. Much of them were in hospital and many days were dire. He was at his best socially even as he sickened. He was a gentleman to every caregiver, doctor, nurse and auxiliary. He was kind, and patient, and polite to the other patients in the ward. Even as he himself worsened. He had a constant stream of visitors constantly by his bedside – willing him back to us.

He loved having us there, but he didn’t feel the need to constantly talk. He was a quiet man. So we’d sit, and of course left to my own devices I’d draw. I drew for posterity, for his grandchildren and their children, and honestly, for myself. I never shared these sketches with him.

My dad dipped to his lowest three weeks ago when he spent a few days completely dependent. He hated that feeling of being a burden worse than his illness, “I am hanging by a tack,” he said. Somehow, he found the energy and fought his way back again from the brink. I think, honestly, he realized that he didn’t want to leave everyone he loved behind.

On a beautiful Thursday in April, my sister and her husband walked cross-country to the hospital and visited with him. They called me on their way home to tell me the good news and how well he seemed to be doing. I phoned him from the other side of the planet, and we chatted about my next visit, and about getting him home again. It was like old times. He sounded great. I told him I loved him, and he told me he loved me. We had come such a long way. If we could just get him home.

On the day he died. With catheter removed. Fully showered, shaved and dressed, he sat in his chair and ate his breakfast porridge, chatting amiably with the auxiliary nurse keeping an eye on him. She asked him a question and didn’t get an answer. He had gone.

I like to think he passed away with a last wee joke unspoken on the tip of his tongue.

My dad has been a force driving my whole life, a relentless presence, a fundamental constant, pushing me to be my best. I didn’t know exactly how much I needed him, until he was gone.

I wish I’d taken a moment to let him know.