By Anonymous
I have received tonnes of emails during the time I have been running the Father’s Day #DADSLOVEWHISKY series. Most, although unique, are unimpressionable. But after reading stories from and about fathers; moving, sad, thoughtful, anguishing stories, it makes you wonder and appreciate how powerfully fathers shape our lives, whether they are absent or present.
This morning I received an email from this lady who attached her father story. I read the first paragraph and knew I was going to run it. I emailed her back with a better brief to tighten her story up and she wrote back with this. She isn’t a writer, but she has a story. She begged to be anonymous.
Dear Daddy, this is your daughter.
My earliest memory of you is on your funeral, I was five then. Some distant cousin of yours came home to tell my mum about your demise and the days that followed were filled with tears (other people’s not mine) and whispers of your life, young family and untimely death.
Since then, many days have flown by, 30 years last year to be precise. I won’t say there is not a day that has passed without me thinking about you, that would be an overstatement, but there are many times I find myself wondering what I would have been with you around. In high school, the all-girls school I went to, every teenage girl I knew had an adoring daddy. And that’s when I started piecing you together, I spoke to my older siblings but unfortunately what they came up with was not good enough for the adoring dad I was patching up. They said you hit mum every so often, they said you died of complications following heavy alcohol drinking; they said you were not reliable and responsible as a daddy, and that you didn’t pay school fees when required. Is that really what you were about? Surely that was not you, you were the wisest man my mum told me, you worked at the media houses, you were funny and loved life, you were loving and very intelligent. Every time a grandchild comes along, and I tell you there are many of them, my mum says how intelligent they look (and don’t ask me what intelligence looks like) she says you can see it in the eyes, and that conversation always ends up with her saying the child is as intelligent as you were.
I think you would be proud of me, of all of us, considering I went to a school where half of the kids didn’t wear shoes to school, and the only reason why my brother and I wore shoes was because my mum had a reputation to uphold as a teacher in the same school. You will remember you had moved away before you passed on, and on the days you were away (moved away, that is) my mum held on to the hope that you would come back, so we stayed in the same house hoping that you would pop by some day. Eventually, on your passing she picked up the pieces and moved on.
We settled in a new home surrounded by new people who never once wondered where the rest of our family was, there was just me and brother with my mum, the rest had flown out of the nest by then. In this new environment we renewed our lives and I have happy memories of my childhood. My mum read us a book every evening, interesting stories like Joan of Arc, Elizabeth of Hungary, Alexander the Great, and it’s in this nightly ritual of reading that I realised I could escape to another world through reading. That’s how I spent my idle times growing up, I ran to another place, I played a character in the book, and don’t get wrong here, I did turn out just fine, nice home, nice family, two dogs to boot, the works. But every so often I run, I run to a world that is not here, sometimes while I am there I meet you, I know it’s you because I have seen a picture of you, the one they carried at the funeral, it sat proudly on the coffin and has stayed ingrained in my mind. On those days I am a little girl, seated on your lap, just being a girl with a daddy, just for a while, unfortunately the visits are always too short and before I know it I am back to my life.
There are good things about being born last in a family, one of them being that family feuds never quite run deep enough to get to you. For me being a last-born meant that I had brothers in law who came fast and furious
when I was about seven years old and luckily have stayed on since. It’s these two gentlemen that I looked up to, they informed me about who fathers are by how they related with their children, they let me in on how nuclear families run, dad, mum, children. They paid my school fees, they came to visit me in school and when I needed my first bra right in the middle of a school term – and that’s an emergency that you won’t understand – I called one of them from the lone booth in the school compound, I made a reverse call and he came through with the request. See they did fill the space, the father space. In fact I have fondly called them “dad” to date.
But there were days I wished you were there, like when at 25 I realised I was pregnant, I thought how unconditionally a father’s love is and imagined that was the one person who would look at me without disappointment in their eyes at such a time, lucky for me my whole family put their arms around me as I figured out my life then. And two years later I wished that you were there to walk me down the aisle, that’s a daddy’s job but your brother did a good job. I think you will be happy to know that as a grown up I have since discovered your family and they are good, your little brother loves us dearly.
I pray for you, mum brought us up as a Catholics, which reminds me, what was your religious conviction? We Catholics believe that prayers can move you from purgatory to the pearly heavens. (And not that I don’t think you are not in heaven but I don’t want to take chances).
Keep well.
Always, the daughter you would have loved to know.